Percy Bysshe Shelley

After reading Mont Blanc by Percy Bysshe Shelley several times, I found that I was taken back by the profundity of this work in particular. Though I love poetry, I do not find myself taking a great deal of interest in most of Shelley’s works because I often find them to be a bit “out there” with the imagery that he uses. I feel that Shelley is a very intelligent person whose work is often difficult to understand because of his intelligence, but like most writers there are things that are less difficult to grasp. I think that because of my love for poetry I am able to appreciate certain things about each of Shelley’s, but I find myself drawn to Mont Blanc more than any of the other works mostly because of lines 1 through 11 and the image that Shelley creates about the universe and the way that it flows.

Percy Shelley opens Mont Blanc by saying:

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—

From these three lines I begin to create my own image of human life and mortality. To me, line 3, “Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom” clearly illustrates the average human life. I feel this way because everyone has dark times in their life, everyone has great times and memories in their life, and there is constant gloom that surrounds every single life, and that gloom is the ever-present knowledge of death or human mortality. From the very moment that our heart starts to beat as a child still in the womb, we begin our journey of life that will eventually result in death at some point; no matter what we do in our lifetime, we are know that we will eventually pass away into death. I feel that Mont Blanc is in a way Percy Shelley’s illustration of life and mortality. In my eyes, it is not the way that we die, but rather the way that we live that is truly important.