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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major romantic poets in England, considered a radical in his poetry, politics, and social views. Works often studied include his lyric narrative poem Ozymandias (1818) and Ode to the West Wind (1819), which features an artful rhyme-scheme known as “terza rima.” Shelley wrote an innovative verse drama, Cenci (1819), and long, visionary poems, including his masterwork Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (1821). Tragically, he died at the age of 29, when his boat went down during a storm in the Gulf of Spezia.
Shelley was part of the circle of visionary authors, including Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and his future wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of the infamous gothic novel, Frankenstein , published in 1818
You might enjoy Edna St. Vincent Millay’s tribute poem, To a Poet That Died Young.

Poems

  • An Invitation
  • Hellas
  • Hymn of Pan
  • Night
  • Ode to the West Wind
  • Ozymandias
  • The Cloud
  • The Moon
  • To a Skylark
  • Essays

  • A Defence of Poetry
  • Essay on the Literature, the Arts, and the Manners of the Athenians
  • Speculations on Metaphysics