The Cloud

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

     From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

     In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

     The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

     As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

     And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

     And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

     And their great pines groan aghast;

And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

     While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

     Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

     It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

     This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

     In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

     Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

     The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,

     Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

     And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

     When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

     Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

     In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

     Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

     From the depth of Heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,

     As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

     Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

     By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

     Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

     The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

     Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

     Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

     Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,

     And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim

     When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

     Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--

     The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

     With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

     Is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,

     While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

     And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

     I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

     The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

     Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

     And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

     I arise and unbuild it again.

Hymn to Intellectual BeautyBY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The awful shadow of some unseen Power

         Floats though unseen among us; visiting

         This various world with as inconstant wing

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

                It visits with inconstant glance

                Each human heart and countenance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,

                Like clouds in starlight widely spread,

                Like memory of music fled,

                Like aught that for its grace may be

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

         With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

         Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

                Ask why the sunlight not for ever

                Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,

                Why fear and dream and death and birth

                Cast on the daylight of this earth

                Such gloom, why man has such a scope

For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever

         To sage or poet these responses given:

         Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavour:

Frail spells whose utter'd charm might not avail to sever,

                From all we hear and all we see,

                Doubt, chance and mutability.

Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven,

                Or music by the night-wind sent

                Through strings of some still instrument,

                Or moonlight on a midnight stream,

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart

         And come, for some uncertain moments lent.

         Man were immortal and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

                Thou messenger of sympathies,

                That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,

                Like darkness to a dying flame!

                Depart not as thy shadow came,

                Depart not—lest the grave should be,

Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

         Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,

         And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;

                I was not heard; I saw them not;

                When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing

                All vital things that wake to bring

                News of birds and blossoming,

                Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

   I shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstasy!

I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers

         To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?

         With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers

                Of studious zeal or love's delight

                Outwatch'd with me the envious night:

They know that never joy illum'd my brow

                Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free

                This world from its dark slavery,

                That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene

         When noon is past; there is a harmony

         In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen,

As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

                Thus let thy power, which like the truth

                Of nature on my passive youth

Descended, to my onward life supply

                Its calm, to one who worships thee,

                And every form containing thee,

                Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind

To fear himself, and love all human kind.

“Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”

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Summary

The speaker says that the shadow of an invisible Power floats among human beings, occasionally

visiting human hearts—manifested in summer winds, or moonbeams, or the memory of music, or

anything that is precious for its mysterious grace. Addressing this Spirit of Beauty, the speaker asks

where it has gone, and why it leaves the world so desolate when it goes—why human hearts can

feel such hope and love when it is present, and such despair and hatred when it is gone. He asserts

that religious and superstitious notions—”Demon, Ghost, and Heaven”—are nothing more than the

attempts of mortal poets and wise men to explain and express their responses to the Spirit of

Beauty, which alone, the speaker says, can give “grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.” Love,

Hope, and Self-Esteem come and go at the whim of the Spirit, and if it would only stay in the human

heart forever, instead of coming and going unpredictably, man would be “immortal and omnipotent.”

The Spirit inspires lovers and nourishes thought; and the speaker implores the spirit to remain even

after his life has ended, fearing that without it death will be “a dark reality.”

The speaker recalls that when he was a boy, he “sought for ghosts,” and traveled through caves and

forests looking for “the departed dead”; but only when the Spirit’s shadow fell across him—as he

mused “deeply on the lot / Of life” outdoors in the spring—did he experience transcendence. At that

moment, he says, “I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!” He then vowed that he would

dedicate his life to the Spirit of Beauty; now he asserts that he has kept his vow—every joy he has

ever had has been linked to the hope that the “awful Loveliness” would free the world from slavery,

and complete the articulation of his words.

The speaker observes that after noon the day becomes “more solemn and serene,” and in autumn

there is a “lustre in the sky” which cannot be found in summer. The speaker asks the Spirit, whose

power descended upon his youth like that truth of nature, to supply “calm” to his “onward life”—the

life of a man who worships the Spirit and every form that contains it, and who is bound by the spells

of the Spirit to “fear himself, and love all humankind.”

Form

Each of the seven long stanzas of the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” follows the same, highly regular

scheme. Each line has an iambic rhythm; the first four lines of each stanza are written in pentameter,

the fifth line in hexameter, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh lines in tetrameter,

and the twelfth line in pentameter. (The syllable pattern for each stanza, then, is 555564444445 .)

Each stanza is rhymed ABBAACCBDDEE.

Commentary

This lyric hymn, written in 1816 , is Shelley’s earliest focused attempt to incorporate the Romantic

ideal of communion with nature into his own aesthetic philosophy. The “Intellectual Beauty” of the

poem’s title does not refer to the beauty of the mind or of the working intellect, but rather to the

intellectual idea of beauty, abstracted in this poem to the “Spirit of Beauty,” whose shadow comes

and goes over human hearts. The poem is the poet’s exploration both of the qualities of beauty (here

it always resides in nature, for example), and of the qualities of the human being’s response to it

(“Love, Hope, and Self-esteem”).

The poem’s process is doubly figurative or associative, in that, once the poet abstracts the metaphor

of the Spirit from the particulars of natural beauty, he then explains the workings of this Spirit by

comparing it back to the very particulars of natural beauty from which it was abstracted in the first

place: “Thy light alone, likemist o’er mountains driven”; “Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds

depart...” This is an inspired technique, for it enables Shelley to illustrate the stunning experience of

natural beauty time and again as the poem progresses, but to push the particulars into the

background, so that the focus of the poem is always on the Spirit, the abstract intellectual ideal that

the speaker claims to serve.

Of course Shelley’s atheism is a famous part of his philosophical stance, so it may seem strange

that he has written a hymn of any kind. He addresses that strangeness in the third stanza, when he

declares that names such as “Demon, Ghost, and Heaven” are merely the record of attempts by

sages to explain the effect of the Spirit of Beauty—but that the effect has never been explained by

any “voice from some sublimer world.” The Spirit of Beauty that the poet worships is not

supernatural, it is a part of the world. It is not an independent entity; it is a responsive capability

within the poet’s own mind.

If the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” is not among Shelley’s very greatest poems, it is only because its

project falls short of the poet’s extraordinary powers; simply drawing the abstract ideal of his own

experience of beauty and declaring his fidelity to that ideal seems too simple a task for Shelley. His

most important statements on natural beauty and on aesthetics will take into account a more

complicated idea of his own connection to nature as an expressive artist and a poet, as we shall see

in “To a Skylark” and “Ode to the West Wind.” Nevertheless, the “Hymn” remains an important poem

from the early period of Shelley’s maturity. It shows him working to incorporate Wordsworthian ideas

of nature, in some ways the most important theme of early Romanticism, into his own poetic project,

and, by connecting his idea of beauty to his idea of human religion, making that theme explicitly his

own.

Summary and Analysis Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Summary

The shadow of a strange power floats unseen throughout the world, entering into man, coming and going mysteriously. Shelley asks this shadow, which he calls a "Spirit of Beauty," where it has gone and why it disappears and leaves us desolate. Then he acknowledges that it is vain to ask this question; one might as well ask why rainbows disappear or why man can both love and hate, despair and hope. No voice from another world has ever answered these questions. The "names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven" are the record of men's vain attempts to get answers to such questions. Only the light of the Spirit of Beauty gives grace and truth to the restless dream which life is. If the Spirit of Beauty remained constantly with man, man would be immortal and omnipotent. It nourishes human thought. The poet beseeches this spirit not to depart from the world. Without it, death would be an experience to be feared.

When Shelley was a boy, he sought spiritual reality in ghosts and the dead. In his search, the shadow of the Spirit of Beauty suddenly fell on him and filled him with elation. He vowed that he would dedicate himself to this Spirit and he has kept his vow. He is convinced that it will free the world from the state of slavery in which it is. He prays that this power will bring calm to his life, for he worships it. It has taught him to fear himself and love all mankind.

Analysis

The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived and written during a boating excursion with Byron on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, in June 1816. The beauty of the lake and of the Swiss Alps is responsible for Shelley's elevating what he calls "Intellectual Beauty" to the ruling principle of the universe.

Alpine scenery was new to Shelley and unutterably beautiful. He was profoundly moved by it, and the poem, he wrote to Leigh Hunt, was "composed under the influence of feelings which agitated me even to tears." Thanks to the Alps, Shelley, who had given up Christianity, had at last found a deity which he could wholeheartedly adore. The worship of beauty is Shelley's new religion, and it is significant that he calls his poem a hymn, a term used almost exclusively for religious verse. Later, in August 1817, Shelley read Plato's Symposium and his faith in beauty was no doubt strengthened by Plato's discussion of abstract beauty in that work and in the Phaedrus, which Shelley read in August 1818. It was daily intercourse with stunning beauty, not Plato, however, that brought Shelley to his new faith. Joseph Barrell, in his Shelley and the Thought of His Time: A Study in the History of Ideas, makes it abundantly clear that the "Hymn" is not Platonic.

The central thought of "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" is that there is a spiritual power that stands apart from both the physical world and the heart of man. This power is unknown to man and invisible, but its shadow visits "this various world with as inconstant wing /

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower" and it visits also "with inconstant glance / Each human heart and countenance." When it passes away it leaves "our state, / This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate." Shelley does not profess to know why Intellectual Beauty, which he calls "unknown and awful," is an inconstant visitor, but he is convinced that if it kept "with [its] glorious train firm state" within man's heart, man would be "immortal and omnipotent." But since the Spirit of Beauty visits the world and man's heart with such irregularity, Shelley pleads with his deity rather than praises it. It remains remote and inaccessible. In the concluding stanza Shelley is a suppliant praying that the power of the Spirit of Beauty will continue to supply its calm "to one who worships thee, / And every form containing thee."

In Stanza V, Shelley confesses that as a boy, while he was searching for spiritual reality (chiefly by reading Gothic romances, it would appear), the shadow of Intellectual Beauty suddenly fell on him. He shrieked and clasped his hands in ecstasy. As a consequence of this experience, he tells us in Stanza VI, he vowed that he would dedicate his "powers / To thee and thine," and he has kept his vow. The experience also left him with the hope that the Spirit of Beauty would free "this world from its dark slavery." In this stanza, Shelley seems to combine two of the major interests of his life, love of beauty and love of freedom.

In regard to the "Intellectual Beauty" of the title, Barrell remarks that it implies an approach by means of the mental faculties but that Shelley probably meant to convey the idea that his concept of beauty was abstract rather than concrete. His approach is romantic and emotional. Shelley, however, seems to think of his Spirit of Beauty as personal, like the God of Christianity. He addresses it, pleads with it, worships it, but he may be using only the rhetorical device of personification.

The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" is more remarkable for what it tells us about Shelley than it is as a work of art. By his very nature, Shelley was an idealist and no form of materialism could appeal to him more than temporarily.