Percy Bysshe Shelley`s Poetry Analysis

Shelley’s poetry covers a variety of themes from extreme joy and ecstasy to brooding despair. Themes such as restlessness, protestings against the power, an interesting relation with nature, ideal love, and a spirit seeking for freedom. I chose death as the theme to analyse because I like to read poems about death, it is interesting how death is interpreted and what the poet thinks about after-death and other death-related philosophical questions. Many of these poems are really depressing and sad such as “ A Dirge“ and “Adonais“ and while analyzing Shelley’s work, it also makes you understand what is going on in Britain and Europe during Shelley’s lifetime.
Firstly, I am going to analyze Shelley`s poem “A Dirge“:
A Dirge

Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,--
Wail, for the world’s wrong!

A dirge means a song that is sung at a funeral, so the title is already very depressing and creating a sad feeling or loneliness because someone is passing away. The two first lines create an image of a really bad day and I would even imagine the image at a funeral. The author describes one image of nature, the winds moaning, the sullen clouds, the sad storm, the vain tears, the bare woods, the branches straining, the deep caves, the dreary main, upon another to make the reader understand how bad his grief feels. Almost all the nouns in the poem are illustrated by very sad and frustrating adjectives which also show that the author wants to create and express a depressing athmosphere. All in all, the author is grieving its own sorry state also in the last line by saying “wail, for the world`s wrong!“. He is saying the whole world is so unfair and untrue