Percy Bysshe Shelley is considered one of the greatest lyric poets. His poems are pure inspiration and light, melodic, and graceful. He had a gift for transforming different forms like drama, prose, romance, and satire into lyrical poetry. His lyrics express intense feelings and passions, often with notes of desire, longing, and sadness. Some of his most outstanding and celebrated lyrics are Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, The Cloud, and To Night. Shelley's lyrics are striking for their spontaneity and sweet melody, coming directly from his heart. While some of his weaker poems were never revised, Shelley will remain renowned as a consummate inventor of beautiful lyric harmon

1. P B SHELLEY (Percy Bysshe) as a lyric poet (Selleys’s Lyricism)
As a lyric poet Shelley is among the very greatest. His song is pure inspiration, a
thing of lightness, melody and grace. Shelley is an intense lyricist as Alexander
Pope is an intense satirist. He converts forms as diverseas drama, proseessay,
romance, satire etc, into lyric. His genius desired a transformation of all
experiences, natural and literary, into the condition of lyric.
Whatever the voice he which speaks to us in his poems, Shelley has the gift of
lending it in sweetest and mostliquid harmonies. Cazamian, says Shelley, s
lyricism is incomparable. Truly, never was the soul of a poet so spontaneously
lyrical. Everything with Shelley is the occasion for musical stir.”Heremains a
lyric poet the greatest that England or perhaps modern Europehas produced”
There is no doubt that Shelley’s lyrics represent the highest achievement of
romantic poetry. Some of the most outstanding lyrics are: Odeto the West
Wind, To a Skylark, TheCloud, To Night, Hymn to intellectual Beauty, etc. In
addition to these we havenumber of exquisite lyrics in Prometheus Unbound
and Hellas. And there is of course, the lyrical elegy Adonis.
The most striking quality of Shelly, lyricism is its spontaneity. His lyrics are pure
effusion, and they come directly fromhis heart. Here is an example of
spontaneous writing:
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then_ as I am listening now
Shelley’s lyrics almost always express an intensity of feeling, or a deep passion
.There is too, a note of desire and longing in mostof his lyrics. His desireis like
the desireof the moth for the star. No wonder, therefore, that a note of
sadness runs through mostof his lyrics. A mood of longing and sadness is
evident in the poem “Rarely, rarely, comets thou.”There is a feeling of sadness
in the poem To Night, in which he expresses a longing for the swiftarrivalof

2. the time of the night. In the poem To a Skylark wehavethe following stanza
expressiveof human sadness:
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not,
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain in fraught:
Our sweetestsongs are thosethat tell of saddestthought. Shelley’s lyrics are
surpassing musicaland sweet. The stanzas already quoted provideillustration
of Shelley’s exquisite melody. To a Skylark, The Cloud, Ode to the Westwind,
and To Night, are all masterpieces not only as regards their content and their
feelings but as regard their sweet melody.
Thus we Shelley are a writer of superb lyrics and that he suffers imperfections
and faults too. Ithas rightly been suggested that all Selleys’s lyrics should not
be lumped together by anthologist. Over somelyrics Shelley certainly took
pains; others wereprovoked by a trivial stimulus, never revised, and never
even given a title. It is these weaker poems which invited attacks or criticism by
the critics in the thirties of this century.
Thus there are two Shelley’s
1. Shelley the great dreamer and the visionary
2. Shelley the singer of endless sorrows.
Very few knew that Shelley has been called “the most pessimistic of English
poets “Shelley is poet of personalmelancholy as well as poet of romantic
melancholy. Under the scrutiny of close criticism the weaknesses wereplainly
visible. But to all readers, Shelly will remain the consummateinventor of lyric
harmonies.