"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" is a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816 and published in 1817.
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" is a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816 and published in 1817.
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was written during the summer of 1816 while Percy and Mary Shelley stayed with Lord Byron near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Percy Shelley sent a finished copy of the poem to his friend Leigh Hunt who immediately lost it. Shelley was therefore forced to create another finished draft of the poem and resend the poem. It was eventually published in Hunt's Examiner on 19 January 1817. [1] The poem also appeared in the 1819 collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; With Other Poems printed by C. H. Reynell for Charles and James Ollier in London and in Miscellaneous and Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by William Benbow in 1826 in London. After the initial publication, Percy Shelley corrected lines 27 and 58 but made no other changes. A second finished version was discovered in December 1976 in the Scrope Davies Notebook; it was written in Mary Shelley's hand and contained many differences from the first published edition. [2]
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.
In his youth, Shelley 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.
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" is an 84-line ode that was influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel of sensibility Julie, or the New Heloise and William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality". Although the theme of the ode, glory's departure, is shared with Wordsworth's ode, Shelley holds a differing view of nature: [3]
The second stanza begins with the narrator addressing Intellectual Beauty:
But he is not answered, as he reveals in stanza three:
The fourth stanza reveals three values:
Shelley replaces the third of the Christian values, faith, with self-esteem, which signifies respect for the human imagination. According to the narrator, we have only temporary access to these values and can only attain them through Intellectual Beauty: [3]
In stanza five, he reveals:
The words he speaks, possibly referring to Christian doctrines, brought him no response. It was not until he mused on life that he was able to experience a sort of religious awakening and learn of Intellectual Beauty: [4]
Once he learns of Intellectual Beauty, he makes a vow, which begins stanza six: [4]
Stanza seven continues with the vow:
The narrator breaks from the Wordsworthian tradition by realising that Intellectual Beauty, and not manifestations of it in nature, is what should be worshipped. The imagination, and not nature, is connected to truth, and the narrator realises that he should revere his own imagination and the imagination of others. [5]
The first published edition varies from both the copy found in the Scrope Davies Notebook copy of the poem and the original manuscript draft in terms of language and philosophical view. [6]
Shelley's understanding of Beauty as an ideal and universal aspect, as opposed to the common understanding of the word as an aesthetic judgment of an object, was influenced by his knowledge of Plato's writings. However, where Plato believed Beauty should be sought after gradually in degrees until one can achieve true Beauty, a process made possible through dialectic, Shelley believed that Beauty could also be found through its earthly manifestations and could only be connected to through the use of the imagination. The origins of Shelley's understanding of Beauty and how to attain it can be found within "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty". The poem's theme is Beauty, but Shelley's understanding of how the mind works is different from Plato's: Plato wrote (principally in the Symposium ) that Beauty is a metaphysical object existing independent of our experiences of particular concrete objects, while Shelley believed that philosophy and metaphysics could not reveal truth and that an understanding of Beauty was futile. Instead, Beauty could only be felt and its source could not be known. [7]
 | This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic.(February 2024) |
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.[ according to whom? ]
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 Shelley and the Thought of His Time: A Study in the History of Ideas, has shown that the "Hymn" is not Platonic.
The central idea 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 in his youth, while he was searching for spiritual reality, chiefly by reading Gothic romances, 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 combined 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 remarked that it implies an approach by means of the mental faculties but that Shelley meant to convey the idea that his concept of beauty was abstract rather than concrete. His approach is romantic and emotional. Shelley, however, thinks of his Spirit of Beauty as personal, like the God of Christianity. He addresses it, pleads with it, worships it, but is using only the rhetorical device of personification.[ according to whom? ]
"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London or, according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats' house at Wentworth Place, also in Hampstead. According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest near the house that he shared with Keats in the spring of 1819. Inspired by the bird's song, Keats composed the poem in one day. It soon became one of his 1819 odes and was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts the following July. The poem is one of the most frequently anthologized in the English language.
"Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" is a Christian hymn by Charles Wesley on Christian perfection. Judging by general repute, it is among Wesley's finest. Judging by its distribution, it is also among his most successful.
"Ode to the West Wind" is an ode, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819 in Cascine wood near Florence, Italy. It was originally published in 1820 by Charles Ollier in London as part of the collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, With Other Poems. Perhaps more than anything else, Shelley wanted his message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes the trope for spreading the word of change through the poet-prophet figure. Some also believe that the poem was written in response to the loss of his son, William in 1819. The ensuing pain influenced Shelley. The poem allegorises the role of the poet as the voice of change and revolution. At the time of composing this poem, Shelley without doubt had the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 in mind. His other poems written at the same time—"The Masque of Anarchy", Prometheus Unbound, and "England in 1819"—take up these same themes of political change, revolution, and role of the poet.
Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written from 10 September to 14 December in 1815 in Bishopsgate, near Windsor Great Park and first published in 1816. The poem was without a title when Shelley passed it along to his contemporary and friend Thomas Love Peacock. The poem is 720 lines long. It is considered to be one of the first of Shelley's major poems.
Prometheus Unbound is a four-act lyrical drama by Percy Bysshe Shelley, first published in 1820. It is concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus, who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, for which he is subjected to eternal punishment and suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by the classical Prometheia, a trilogy of plays attributed to Aeschylus. Shelley's play concerns Prometheus' release from captivity, but unlike Aeschylus' version, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Jupiter (Zeus). Instead, Jupiter is abandoned by his supportive elements and falls from power, which allows Prometheus to be released.
Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for John Keats in 1821, and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and best-known works. The poem, which is in 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after 11 April, when Shelley heard of Keats' death. It is a pastoral elegy, in the English tradition of John Milton's Lycidas. Shelley had studied and translated classical elegies. The title of the poem is modelled on ancient works, such as Achilleis, an epic poem by the 1st-century AD Roman poet Statius, and refers to the untimely death of the Greek Adonis, a god of fertility. Some critics suggest that Shelley used Virgil's tenth Eclogue, in praise of Cornelius Gallus, as a model.
"Ode to Psyche" is a poem by John Keats written in spring 1819. The poem is the first of his 1819 odes, which include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale". "Ode to Psyche" is an experiment in the ode genre, and Keats's attempt at an expanded version of the sonnet format that describes a dramatic scene. The poem serves as an important departure from Keats's early poems, which frequently describe an escape into the pleasant realms of one's imagination. Keats uses the imagination to show the narrator's intent to resurrect Psyche and reincarnate himself into Eros (love). Keats attempts this by dedicating an "untrodden region" of his mind to the worship of the neglected goddess.
A troparion in Byzantine music and in the religious music of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a short hymn of one stanza, or organised in more complex forms as series of stanzas.
Il Penseroso is a poem by John Milton, first found in the 1645/1646 quarto of verses The Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, published by Humphrey Moseley. It was presented as a companion piece to L'Allegro, a vision of poetic mirth. The speaker of this reflective ode dispels "vain deluding Joys" from his mind in a ten-line prelude, before invoking "divinest Melancholy" to inspire his future verses. The melancholic mood is idealised by the speaker as a means by which to "attain / To something like prophetic strain," and for the central action of Il Penseroso – which, like L'Allegro, proceeds in couplets of iambic tetrameter – the speaker speculates about the poetic inspiration that would transpire if the imagined goddess of Melancholy he invokes were his Muse. The highly digressive style Milton employs in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso dually precludes any summary of the poems' dramatic action as it renders them interpretively ambiguous to critics. However, it can surely be said that the vision of poetic inspiration offered by the speaker of Il Penseroso is an allegorical exploration of a contemplative paradigm of poetic genre.
"We Gather Together" is a Christian hymn of Dutch origin written in 1597 by Adrianus Valerius as "Wilt heden nu treden" to celebrate the Dutch victory over Spanish forces in the Battle of Turnhout. It was originally set to a Dutch folk tune. In the United States, it is popularly associated with Thanksgiving Day and is often sung at family meals and at religious services on that day.
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a poem by William Wordsworth, completed in 1804 and published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). The poem was completed in two parts, with the first four stanzas written among a series of poems composed in 1802 about childhood. The first part of the poem was completed on 27 March 1802 and a copy was provided to Wordsworth's friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who responded with his own poem, "Dejection: An Ode", in April. The fourth stanza of the ode ends with a question, and Wordsworth was finally able to answer it with seven additional stanzas completed in early 1804. It was first printed as "Ode" in 1807, and it was not until 1815 that it was edited and reworked to the version that is currently known, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality".
My Jesus I Love Thee is a poem written by William Ralph Featherston in 1864 when he was 16 years old, although one source says he could have been just 12 years old. The first two lines of this poem are nearly the same as a hymn written by Caleb J. Taylor, published in 1804; this hymn is used as the basis for the song Imandra by Ananias Davisson in the Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony in 1820, reprinted in Southern Harmony in 1835. There are other similarities between Featherston's poem and camp-meeting songs published in the 1820s onward.
The alma mater of the University of Pittsburgh was adopted soon after the University changed its name in 1908 from the Western University of Pennsylvania to its current moniker. Lyrics were written by George M. P. Baird, class of 1909 and were set to the tune of what was then the Austrian National Anthem. A new tune for the "Alma Mater" hymn was composed by Charles W. Scovel, class of 1883, but it was not widely adopted and was either lost or became obscure.
Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni is an ode by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem was composed between 22 July and 29 August 1816 during Shelley's journey to the Chamonix Valley, and intended to reflect the scenery through which he travelled. "Mont Blanc" was first published in 1817 in Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley's History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland, which some scholars believe to use "Mont Blanc" as its culmination.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a British writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets, including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem."
Hymn Before Sunrise is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1802. Originally published in The Morning Post, it describes feelings that Coleridge claimed to have experienced on his own. However, it was later revealed that parts of the poem were heavily influenced by a poem by Friederike Brun, which led to criticism against Coleridge for not acknowledging his sources. Aspects of the poem did have direct origin in Coleridge's own life and experiences, and the work represents one of the last times a poem captured his feelings of joy during that period of his life.
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson was a collection of poetry published in November, 1810 by Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg while they were students at Oxford University. The pamphlet was subtitled: "Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that Noted Female who attempted the Life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor." The pamphlet was published by John Munday and Henry Slatter in Oxford and consisted of fictional fragments that were in the nature of a hoax and prank or burlesque.
"The Devil's Walk: A Ballad" was a major poetical work published as a broadside by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812. The poem consisted of seven irregular ballad stanzas of 49 lines. The poem was a satirical attack and criticism of the British government. Satan is depicted meeting with key members of the British government. The poem was modelled on and meant as a continuation of "The Devil's Thoughts" of 1799 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. The work is important in Shelley's development and evolution of writings that castigate and criticise the British government to achieve political and economic reform.
The Triumph of Life was the last major work by Percy Bysshe Shelley before his death in 1822. The work was left unfinished. Shelley wrote the poem at Casa Magni in Lerici, Italy in the early summer of 1822. He modelled the poem, written in terza rima, on Petrarch's Trionfi and Dante's Divine Comedy.
"Mutability" is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley which appeared in the 1816 collection Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude: And Other Poems. Half of the poem is quoted in his wife Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) although his authorship is not acknowledged, while the 1816 poem by Leigh Hunt is acknowledged with the name of the author given. Only Percy Bysshe Shelley is not acknowledged as an author. There is also a prose version or further elaboration of the same themes of the poem in Frankenstein that immediately precedes the quotation of the poem.
