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“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
Shelley wrote “Ozymandias” in 1817 as part of a competition with his friend Horace Smith. The Examiner published the poem in January of 1818, and Shelley wrote this particular work in the form of a sonnet (14 lines, iambic pentameter, set rhyme scheme, etc.). In the sonnet competition with Smith, the two had to write a sonnet on a specific topic in an allotted amount of time. Shelley’s sonnet describes a broken statue of a once famous and powerful ruler reduced to rubble. The main message to readers is to beware of hubris and overfeeding one’s ego.
“England in 1819” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839)
Though it was published posthumously, Shelley originally wrote “England in 1819” in the year that appears in the title. He wrote the poem in response to the Peterloo Massacre, which occurred when peaceful demonstrators desiring parliamentary reform were charged by the cavalry, killing 15. The poem was most likely not published right away as Shelley could have been charged with sedition. The poem gives a biting critique of royalty, politicians, and the army.
“A Lament” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824)
Published posthumously by Mary Shelley, this particular poem has a pessimistic tone and message.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Alastor Or The Spirit Of Solitude
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A vindication of natural diet: Being one in a series of notes to Queen Mab (a philosophical poem)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mutability
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Theo Gayer-Anderson
Prometheus Unbound
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester
Harry Buxton Forman, Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Triumph of Life
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The World's Best Poetry, Volume 5 (Part 1): Nature
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter
To a Skylark
Percy Bysshe Shelley