ON DEATH.[1]

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST.—Ecclesiastes.

The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn’s undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan 5
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, 10
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow 15
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be, 20
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? 25
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see? 30

INTRODUCTION

Percy Bysshe Shelley, as the rest of romantic poets, was moved by the beauty of nature, by the greatness of the world, and most of all, by the mysterious aspects of life and death. He came to despise religion, which rules over the man and at the same time, he actually trusted in mankind possibilities to guide their own lives.[2] But such a sublime desire had its dark moments of disappointment, of confusion, in front the inscrutable and brief life.[3] Those ideas are reflected on his poem On Death, which was written by Shelley between 1814 and 1816, and was published with his work Alastor in 1816.[4]

THE POEM

1. Formal aspects

On Death has five stanzas made of six lines (sextain). Each line has a pattern of 9-10 syllables. Its meter is made of 4 feet per line, which creates an iambic tetrameter, although many lines have some dactyl foot. All these characteristics give the poem a special metrical rhythm.

About the rhyme we can say that the scheme is ABABCC, with some imperfect rhymes like ‘free’ - ‘destiny’  (lines 11 and 12) or even eye rhymes like ‘there’ - ‘eye’ (lines 19 and 21).

2. Analysis

The title of this poem is very meaningful, because it is the theme of it. The whole piece of text seems to be a deep analysis of what life and death means to the poet; like a description of his feelings and impressions about it. So the main ideas we find are mystery towards everything that involves human existence in this world; also a hopeless sensation of uncontrollable change and some kind of despise to those who claim to understand life and death. And all these thoughts are expressed in stanzas that can be grouped into three parts that structures the poem.

In the first part, which is made of the first stanza, he seems to summarize in a metaphor the human existence. As I said, he expresses the shortness of life in a rhetorical figure, in which he compares life to the light shed by a ‘meteor beam’ (line 2) over a piece of land. He uses a pathetic fallacy, giving the meteor the capacity of smiling, and he also describes that ‘smile’ (line 1) as ‘pale, cold and moony’ (line 1), adjectives that can also be applied to ‘life’ (line 5), which he later describes as ‘fickle and wan’ (line 5).  To complete this metaphor of meteoric days, he includes by the end of the stanza another verb that describes how life ‘flits’ (line 6) around us until we die. The entire paragraph shows a hopeless vision of life.

The second part can include the second and third stanzas, where he describes man’s situation with regard to that ephemeral life. He starts appealing directly to us, as readers, and to the entire mankind by saying ‘O man! Hold thee in courage of soul’ (line 7). Those are instructions for us to be able to survive in a world which he describes as full of ‘stormy shades’ and ‘clouds’ (lines 8 and 9). But he gives a beam of light among all these pessimistic views saying that a ‘wondrous day’ (line 10) should wait for us, when ‘hell and heaven’ shall let us ‘free’ (line 11) to our ‘destiny’ (line 12), which seems to be an allusion to the religious morality that rules our lives, making us fearful of death and coarsening even more our journey through this world.  He goes on explaining, with a personification of the world as a ‘nurse’ and a ‘mother’ (lines 13 and 14), how attached are we to this earthly existence, because even though it is a ‘mystery’ (line 18) for us, it is ‘all we know’ and ‘all we feel’ (lines 13 and 14). That is why, because of our religious believes and our attachment to life, we understand death as a ‘fearful blow’ (line 15).

In the third part, which corresponds to the fourth and fifth stanzas, Shelley shows his impressions about death. He uses a synecdoche talking about the ‘grave’ (line 19) in reference to death, from which he says that holds ‘secrets’ (line 14). Then he illustrates the impossibility of knowing nothing at all about the eternal rest because the ‘eye’  and ‘ear’ (line 21) that are inside the grave will no longer ‘see’ or ‘hear’ (line 22). In that way, he finishes the stanza making a reference to the ‘boundless realm of unending change’ (line 24); an epithet which can be applied to the world because the cyclic movement from life to death is the only thing eternal. In the next stanza, he continues dealing with death; but this time he asks several rhetorical questions, building an anaphora through several lines that start with the question ‘Who’ and follows with some forced parallelisms like the verbs ‘telleth’, ‘lifteth’ and ‘painteth’ (lines 25, 26, 27). Furthermore, to reinforce the dramatic effect of the questions he uses an oxymoron, opposing ‘telleth’ to ‘unspeaking’ (line 25), ‘lifteth’ to ‘veil’ (line 26) and ‘painteth’ to ‘shadows’ (line 27). In that way, he uses an antithesis to explain that it is impossible to reveal such transcendental matters. In this sense, we must remember that Shelley was an atheist[5], so we can think that these are references to the “wise” Church, because to finish his poem, he adds another question referring to those who ‘uniteth the hopes of what shall be with the fears and the love for that which we see?’ (lines 25 and 26); phrase that evokes us an institution that not only claims to know about the enigmas of death, but also uses that knowledge to make us fear or love the earthly things.

In this poem, the voice who states those impressions is not impersonal, because he includes himself several times in it by saying, for example ‘our steps’ (line 6), ‘we know’ and ‘we feel’ (lines 13, 14 and 17). Despite that, there is also a straight call to the reader when he says ‘O man! Hold thee’ (line 7). For that reason we can say that there is not an exclusive ideal reader; anyone who reads this poem can feel identified with his words, because it is directed to all the living man. With that purpose, he writes in an understandable register, with well-known symbols and with clear connotations.

3. Symbolism

Throughout the poem, the writer uses several images to give a poetic tone. For example, ‘the meteor beam’ (line 2) that he uses to describe life, is clearly an image that evokes the sense of ephemeral; something meteoric is something that happens in a fast and abrupt way.

The inclusion of terms such as ‘Heaven and Hell’ (line 11) is of great importance, because they make us thing of the Christian tradition. In this sense, he also confront terms like ‘night’ (line 2) and ‘light’ (line 4), which can be interpreted in terms of inexistence and life. But the most remarkable image of Christianity in the poem is the presence, under the title of the poem, of a Biblical quotation. In so far as it may be the main inspiration to write this poem about death. And as the theme of this poem is the death, one of the more significant symbols here is ‘grave’ (line 19) because it is a obvious symbol of it.

Finally, to represent all the misfortunes and mysteries that one find in life, he uses two times the term ‘shades’ (line 8) and ‘shadows’ (line 27). And another symbol that gives support to that idea of inscrutable life and secrecy is ‘veil’ (line 26).

4. Place of the poem within the poet’s work

On Death was one of the early poems of Shelley.[6] It was written and published in 1816, some years after the publication of his ideological treatise The Necessity of Atheism (1811) and contemporarily to one of his major poetic works, Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude (1816).

The Necessity of Atheism is a treatise on atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley published anonymously in 1811 while he was a student at University College, Oxford. A revised and expanded version was printed in 1813. (“Necessity of Atheism” by P.B. Shelley. Wikipedia. The Free Enclyclopedia. Nov. 2007)

Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1815 and first published in 1816… At this point in his writing career, Shelley was deeply influenced by Wordsworth's poetry. The name does not refer to the hero or Poet of the poem, however, but instead to the spirit who divinely animates the Poet's imagination…In Alastor the speaker ostensibly recounts the life of a Poet who zealously pursues the most obscure part of nature in search of "strange truths in undiscovered lands…The Poet finds himself ready to sink into the supernatural world and break through the threshold into death…The journey to the very source of nature led, finally, to an immanence within nature's very structure and to a world free of decay and change. (“Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude” by P. B. Shelley. Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Nov. 2007)

Taking this fact into consideraration, and analyzing the main ideas of both references, we can say that On Death maintain certain topics that can find in his treatise of Atheism, such as critics to the Christian tradition, which we also found in our previous interpretation. In Addition, as Alastor was published almost at the same time as this poem, we can also see clear references and questions about death and enigmatic truths in both works.

Moreover, we can distinguish several natural images and transcendental elements in this texts, as well as in most of his further poems such as Montblanc, Hymn to intellectual Beauty, Ode to the West Wind, To skylark, etc.

PERSONAL RESPONSE

It seems to me that On Death is that kind of poem that someone would write in a moment of uncertainty and doubt, when all the transcendental questions that are unanswered invade the mind. All those questions could inspire a poem about death, because it is the only certain thing in a world of “unending change”. But that final step is feared by everyone because it is impossible to know what happens at that point. I guess that is why so many people find comfort in religion, because they give an answer to those questions. However, Shelley does not belong to that group of religious people and in my view, his intention with this poem it to open our eyes, making us realize that any person or institution holds the truth about life or death, and that the only possible comfort is to hold on “in courage of soul’”.

Academic year 2007/2008
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ivonne Pamela Landázuri
ilanbe@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press