I found Shelley’s radicalism so interesting throughout this poetry. He was feeling and powerful in his words about life and those he saw around him. In particular, his poetry about fellow poets shows his opinions so distinctly. He expresses his own political and emotional views through talking of others in both a positive and negative light. But then he is able to counter this realism with a sense of dreaming and the supernatural. Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude shows this dreamlike quality that Shelley is so able to provide. The entire poem moves like a lucid dream, through the character’s own dreams and even when the character is outside of his dream scape. Lines 470-493 takes on the senses to really integrate the reader into the poem by showing them what they can see, hear, and feel.
The poem I really liked the most was Mutability because of how even in such a short space of lines, so much of the human identity is touched on. He shows how humanity is founded in the ability for people to adjust themselves to their situations. We are able to keep moving forward and that is incredibly unique. It may not be easy, actually it will probably be very difficult, but that does not mean that it is not valuable.
Romanticism Blog 