Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

The life

Expelled from Oxford for atheism at nineteen, he spent the rest of his short life arguing for political and imaginative freedom. He drowned off Italy at twenty-nine.

The most politically radical of the Romantics, and the most lyric.

Power Freedom Nature

Annotated here2 texts

SonnetRomantic

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1818

A broken statue, a desert, and the longest-lasting boast in English.

Gentle · 3 minRead→

OdeRomantic

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1820

A poet asking the weather to use him as an instrument.

Demanding · 5 minRead→