Autumn
Shelley sets many of his poems in autumn, including “Hymn
to Intellectual Beauty” and “Ode to the West Wind.” Fall is a time
of beauty and death, and so it shows both the creative and destructive
powers of nature, a favorite Shelley theme. As a time of change,
autumn is a fitting backdrop for Shelley’s vision of political and social
revolution. In “Ode to the West Wind,” autumn’s brilliant colors
and violent winds emphasize the passionate, intense nature of the
poet, while the decay and death inherent in the season suggest the
sacrifice and martyrdom of the Christ-like poet.
Ghosts and Spirits
Shelley’s interest in the supernatural repeatedly appears
in his work. The ghosts and spirits in his poems suggest the possibility
of glimpsing a world beyond the one in which we live. In “Hymn to
Intellectual Beauty,” the speaker searches for ghosts and explains
that ghosts are one of the ways men have tried to interpret the world
beyond. The speaker of “Mont Blanc” encounters ghosts and shadows
of real natural objects in the cave of “Poesy.” Ghosts are inadequate
in both poems: the speaker finds no ghosts in “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,”
and the ghosts of Poesy in “Mont Blanc” are not the real thing,
a discovery that emphasizes the elusiveness and mystery of supernatural
forces.
Christ
From his days at Oxford, Shelley felt deeply doubtful
about organized religion, particularly Christianity. Yet, in his
poetry, he often represents the poet as a Christ-like figure and
thus sets the poet up as a secular replacement for Christ. Martyred
by society and conventional values, the Christ figure is resurrected
by the power of nature and his own imagination and spreads his prophetic
visions over the earth. Shelley further separates his Christ figures
from traditional Christian values in Adonais, in
which he compares the same character to Christ, as well as Cain,
whom the Bible portrays as the world’s first murderer. For Shelley,
Christ and Cain are both outcasts and rebels, like romantic poets
and like himself.
