Position:Home>Poetry> One word is too often profaned by Percy Bysshe Shelly?

I'm glad you like Shelley; let's see if I can do this for you!.

Notice that the first stanza contains four sentences separated by semicolons, but Shelley deliberately avoids parallel structure to convey a progression of concepts!. This slows the poem's flow and demands rereading; for this reason somebody I much admire once said that Shelley is a `poet's poet!.' His progression of ideas starts at home (`for me'), circles through increasing abstraction (`for thee!.!.!.' `for prudence') to return to himself: `And pity from thee [is] more dear [to me]/than that from another!.'

The second stanza is really about the inexorable beauty of nature, and how that hints at something more lasting; but let's return to the second stanza in a second!. This little synopsis provides some insight into the first stanza!. The second assertion of stanza one (lines 3-4) is: `one feeling [is] too falsely disdained/for thee to disdain it!.' False disdain (on the part of the lady) seems to be a criticism of the etiquette of courtship, in favour of more candid or natural relations!. By this means we also know the speaker is a man!.

The first stanza's third assertion (lines 5-6) is a beautiful contradiction, or reconciliation, and probably the crux of the poem!. He writes: `One hope is too like despair/for prudence to smother!.' Oddly, prudence smothering hope is the sort of socialised behaviour against which lines 3-4 railed; yet this line seems to accept it, except when `one hope' turns to despair!. (Perhaps this is because prudence is more real than the show of false disdain!.) When hope turns to despair, it is as when Mr Darcy ruefully declares his love for Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice: `In vain have I struggled!. It will not do!. My feelings will not be repressed!.' This is a common trope of courtship which Shelley (and Austen too) frame as literally true: hope turning to despair seems inexorable as the seasons and beyond human contrievance!. I like these lines because civilisation, flawed and mighty, fights back against this `one word,' transcendent love, and only partly loses!. The last assertion brings `thee' and `me' together, figuratively in an awkward union of pity and despair (lines 7-8)

The second stanza is all about bridging the gap between words and reality with metaphysics!. `One word,' in the first, was too often profaned; in the second, the poet derides `what men call love;' he then sets out to illustrate three examples and a summary of what he thinks love is, and he offers this to the poem's addressee (`wilt thou accept not')!. The first is a syntactically convoluted form of earthly love lifted to heaven by the power of the heart, and condignly sealed!. The heart is the key, and silent, metaphysical actor in that little drama!. The next two are also about inexorability: the moth's reflex for light (which he renders as a star, with beautiful inaccuracy), and moreso, `the night for the morrow,' which Shakespeare expresses as `and it must follow, as the night the day!.!.!. ' These three things Shelley summarises in the fourth, as a sort of escape into truth: `sphere of our sorrow' is lovely because it zooms out to the image of the earth, the sphere from which earthly love, the moth, and the night were all in different ways trying to escape!. This is finally similar to when Keats says, `Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art,/not in lone splendour hung aloft the night/but watching with eternal lids apart/!.!.!.the moving waters at their priestlike task/of pure ablution round earth's human shores!.'

I hope this helped!. I like this poem a great deal, and give it about 7!.25/10, mainly because it is too challenging to read, and even too dense sometimes to enjoy!.

Edit: It is not worth mentioning, but I'll say it anyway, that the first line is more-or-less borrowed from an elegiac sonnet by Charlotte Turner Smith, who was a bit more than a generation older than Shelley, and a friend of his wife's (Mary Shelley's) mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin!. The poem is To Friendship, number 27!. It is vastly more heartfelt than Shelley's but not finely wrought!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Mojo, this is an absolutely brilliant poem because it moves with the reader!.!.!.in other words!.!.!.I may read it as what it reflects in me while you may read it completely on another subject!.

I doubt I would have caught it that way had I not been asked!. First I read for myself in which it was religious and reflecting the heavens, secondly I read for a girl going through despair, no end in site, a martyr of sorts searching for a glimmer of hope!.

despair!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.then!.!.!.!.!.!.!.hopeWww@QuestionHome@Com

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