Queen Mab

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Overview

Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem; With Notes, published in 1813 in nine cantos with seventeen notes, is the first large poetic work written by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), the English Romantic poet. This poem was written early in Shelley's career and serves as a foundation to his theory of revolution. It is his first major poem. In this work, he depicts a two-pronged revolt involving necessary changes, brought on by both nature and the virtuousness of humans. Shelley took William Godwin's idea of "necessity" and combined it with his own idea of ever-changing nature, to establish the theory that contemporary societal evils would dissolve naturally in time. This was to be coupled with the creation of a virtuous mentality in people who could envision the ideal goal of a perfect society. The ideal was to be reached incrementally, because Shelley (as a result of Napoleon's actions in the French Revolution), believed that the perfect society could not be obtained immediately through violent revolution. Instead it was to be achieved through nature's evolution and ever-greater numbers of people becoming virtuous and imagining a better society. He set the press and ran 250 copies of this radical and revolutionary tract. Queen Mab is infused with scientific language and naturalising moral prescriptions for an oppressed humanity in an industrialising world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788822872333
Publisher:	Percy Bysshe Shelley
Publication date:	11/30/2016
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
File size:	165 KB

Read an Excerpt

VII. I was an infant when my mother went To see an atheist burned. She took me there; The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; The multitude was gazing silently: And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, Tempered disdain, in his unaltering eye, Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth: The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs: His resolute eyes were s'corched to blindness soon; His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob Uttered a cry of triumph, and 1 wept. Weep not, child ! cried my mother, for that man Has said, there is no God. FAIRY. There is no God! Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed: Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, His ceaseless generations tell their tale; Let every part depending on the chain That links it to the whole, point to the hand That grasps its term! let every seed that falls In silent eloquence unfold its store Of argument; infinity within, t Infinity without, belie creation; The exterminable spirit it contains Is nature's only God; but human pride Is skilful to invent most serious names To hide its ignorance. The name of God Has fenced about all crime with holiness, Himself the creature of his worshippers, Whose names, and attributes, and passions change, Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, Even with the human dupes who build his shrines. Still serving o'er the war-polluted world For desolation's watch-word; whether hosts Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans; Or countless partners of his power divide His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, Ho...