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Percy Bysshe ShelleyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The 372-line poem contains 91 stanzas, largely quatrains (a stanza of four lines of poetry). The poem’s aabb rhyme scheme repeats throughout the poem, though some stanzas have slant rhymes, which means the words are not exact rhymes.
Most lines have seven syllables, though some have eight, and each pair of syllables is a trochee, or a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. This meter is based on a popular ballad form of Shelley’s day.
The poem’s form is a ballad, which is a poem or song that narrates a story with short stanzas. Often ballads are passed orally as a part of folk culture. As a ballad, the poem also focuses on imagery that is both historically important and tragic. Shelley’s framing of his poem as a ballad also supports how he positions his subject as epic in nature, as if this event was the origin of a new England, like the mythical origins of Rome. Shelley’s characters, while ordinary people, are extraordinary in their actions in the face of an almost superhuman enemy. The ballad form allows Shelley to use this event as a rallying cry for radical reform.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry
A Defence of Poetry
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais
Adonais
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mutability
Mutability
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode to the West Wind
Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandias
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prometheus Unbound
Prometheus Unbound
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Queen Mab
Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Triumph of Life
The Triumph of Life
Percy Bysshe Shelley
To a Skylark
To a Skylark
Percy Bysshe Shelley