CHAPTER - III
SHELLEY AS A REVOLUTIONARY
3.1. Introduction
This chapter depicts Shelley as the true champion of freedom and liberty. He came out as
a revolutionary revolting against all shams of conventions and creeds and all laws that curtailed
freedom of people and exploited them. He revolted against all oppressive rules and conventions
and wrote calling upon people to rise in revolt against exploitation. He was a revolutionary
propagandist.
3.2. ‘England in 1819’
This poem was written late in 1819 but was not published until 1839. Shelley describes
the condition of England under George III and hopes that change will come.
3.2.1. Commentary
In 1819 and 1820, Shelley had the idea of publishing a book of political poems. Although
the book was never published, he did write a number of poems which can be read together. These
poems reflect his anger at the political situation of the time and his idealism that a new sanity and
justice can replace the violence and corruption. Mary Shelley, in her note to the poems of 1819
writes: ‘He believed that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable and he eagerly
ranked himself on the people’s side’.
3.3. His Contempt for the Rulers
In ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, from the opening line with its six pronounced stresses, the first
twelve lines operate as a series of categorical statements emphasizing Shelley’s contempt for the
oppressors and then for the institutions and instruments of oppression.
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Alliteration, regularity of stress and the images of depravity and blood contributes to the force of
Shelley’s accusation. With it accumulations of condemnations and the surprising release the poem
is very effective but although Shelley qualifies any easy optimism with the conditional ‘may’
(line 13) the ‘glorious phantom’ is rather insubstantial to perform the task asked of it.
Two British writers who contributed to, and developed this radical political thinking
(redistribution of wealth and rights) were Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and William Godwin (17561836). Both attacked the idea that a particular class, a royal family or an aristocratic order had the
right to rule over other people.
Both attacked the abused endemic in existing forms of
Government and Godwin went as far as to argue that man could become perfect in a new kind of
society. Neither saw a belief in God as rational or beneficial. Both were labeled as dangerous
and subversive by the British Govt.
The French Revolution and succeeding Napoleonic wars till the final defeat of Napoleon
at Waterloo (1815) preoccupied the minds of European countries. In Britain there was
considerable fear in the conservative circles that the revolutionary ideas could spread to Britain
where social inequality, poverty, a savage penal code, laxity in religious life and corruption in
Govt. and the law, offered fertile soil for political agitation.
Shelley is more direct in his challenge, to the ruling classes in the ‘Song to the Men of
England’ (which George Orwell parodied in the first chapter of ‘Animal Farm with song of
‘Beasts of England’):
Men of England wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrant wears? (572-1-4)
Another spirited piece of treason is his revised (distorted) version of the National Anthem:
God prosper, speed and save
God raise from England’s grave
Her murdered Queen!
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Pave the swift victory
The steps of Liberty
Whom Britons own to be
Immortal Queen …. (574-1-7)
Returning to reality, Shelley catalogued the country’s ills in a powerful and untidy sonnet,
‘England in 1819’.
The revising of the National Anthem and exposing the Royal Family were considered
treason. But Shelley did this as a protest to the policy of oppression followed by the British
Government in 1819. (The original version of the British National Anthem is given as Appendix).
Besides lyrical dramas, Shelley wrote longer poems, an elegy, lyrics, odes and sonnets.
The chief longer poems are: Queen Mab, Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude, The Revolt of Islam,
Epipsychidion and The Triumph of Life.
The elegy is Adonais, written on the death of Keats.
His popular sonnets are ‘Ozymandias’ and ‘England in 1819’.
3.4. On Women’s Oppression and Free Love
Queen Mab: It is an astonishing debut poem for a twenty year old poet, innovative in its
formal variety, bravely radical in its content. Its fairy machinery thinly masks the forthright
attacks on the monarchy, religion and war and tyranny and Shelley acknowledged it to be the
product of his constitutional enthusiasm. This aspect of his personality inspired two sonnets in the
same year.
Shelley’s campaign to promote radical thought is as announced, the vehement opening
epigrams from Enlightenment, rationalist Voltaire’s onslaught on Christianity, ‘Crush the
infamous thing’ (p.30), a clarion call to action also adopted by the revolutionary French Jacobin
of 1790, the illuminists. The declaration reinforced by the epigrams which Lucricius, who
asserted that he would free men’s’ minds from crippling bonds of superstition, and from Greek
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scientist Archimedes, who claimed that he would be able to ‘move the earth’ given the right point
of leverage.
He was a revolutionary in thought and his writings. In literature also he introduced his
revolutionary ideas. In Greek literature, ‘Prometheus Unbound’ of Aeschylus, supposed the
reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim – Prometheus – as the price of disclosure of the danger
threatened to his empire by consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Prometheus was punished
by Jupiter for stealing fire from heaven and giving it to mankind.1
In his preface to ‘Prometheus Unbound’, Shelley proclaims that, had he framed his story
on the model of Aeschylus, he would be doing so to restore the lost drama of Aeschylus. But it
was not his ambition. He was averse to the catastrophe of reconciling the champion with the
oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable which is so powerfully sustained by the
sufferings and endurance of Prometheus would be annihilated if he conceived him as unsaying his
high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary
being resemblance in any degree of Prometheus is Satan and Prometheus was in his judgment, a
more poetical character than Satan because in addition to courage and majesty he was firm and
patient, and opposed to the omnipotent force. Further, Prometheus was exempt from the taints of
ambition, envy, revenge and desire. For personal aggrandizement, which in the hero of Paradise
Lost, interfere with interest. But Prometheus is, as if were, the type of the highest perfection of
moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and finest motives to the best and noblest
ends.
Shelley acknowledges that we owe the great writers of the golden age of English literature
to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive
form of Christian religion. He stressed that we owe Milton to the progress and development of the
same spirit, the sacred Milton was a Republican and a bold enquirer into morals and religion. The
great writers of current age are the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in
our social conditions or opinions which cement it. He vows that, he would produce a systematic
history of genuine elements of human society. He further vowed that advocates of injustice and
superstition could not be allowed to flatter themselves that he should take Aeschylus rather than
Plato as his model.
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He made his hero endure all the woes without compromising his ideal and finally he was
liberated by Demogargan who overthrew Jupiter. Thus Shelley created a revolution in his literary
form upholding the principle of high standard of virtue and glory.
At the beginning of 1811 while at Oxford, he prepared and published what he called a
‘leaflet of letters’, having for its title ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. He sent copies to all the
Bishops, to the Vice-chancellor of Oxford and the heads of the houses. On Lady Day, he was
summoned before the authorities of his college, refused to answer the question whether he had
written the pamphlet told the master and fellows that their proceedings would become a court of
inquisitors but not of free men in a free country and was expelled for contumacy.
As Shelley himself admitted that 'to reform the society is a passion with me', right from
his childhood, he had developed a hatred towards tyranny of the established-order of the church
and the state. Attracted by the writings of the French Enlightenment Movement, he grew into a
stout champion of individual liberty. As the author, Compton Rickett describes him. “He was not
only a poet but a reformer also – little interested in the past, mindful only of the present, his eyes
were fixed intensely on the future. To renovate the world and to bring in a Utopia was his aim.
For this reason he can be regarded emphatically as the poet of the eager, sensitive youth – the
spiritual youth and reformers. As the child of French Revolution, he imbibed the ideals of Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity.
3.5 Shelley as a Propagandist
When the anatomy of a social revolution is analysed, one can realise that there are
different stages in development of a revolution. The first and foremost is the ideological
propaganda.
The second stage is preparation of the people for realization of the goal. The third stage is
the mobilization for and involvement of people in the process of staging the change. It may
involve a bloodless struggle or a bloody struggle like the French Revolution. The fourth stage is
establishment of the targeted change and the fifth stage which is very essential is the
administration and protection of the object secured. In this course of development, different
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people play different roles to keep the movement on. Each stage may take numerous years
depending on objective conditions.
In the case of French Revolution, the Enlightenment Movement laid the foundation and
later, the philosophers and writers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Volney etc. did the propagandists’
work. They prepared the people of France for changing the ancient regime and for a republic.
Like them, Shelley did the work of propaganda to prepare the people of England for a social
revolution, abolition of monarchy and establishment of a parliamentary democracy. To do the
work of a propagandist in the most adverse political and social conditions, demands enormous
courage of conviction and determination. Shelley did this job unmindful of the problems
involved. He was a true reformer and a social revolutionary.
In his social thinking, Shelley was deeply influenced by William Godwin (1756-1836) the
English political thinker and man of letters. A few excerpts from his book “Enquiry Concerning
Political Justice” are:
“There is no real wealth but the labour of man.....the poor one set to labour for what?”
“Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets for want of which their babies are
frozen by the cold in their miserable hovels, not those comforts of civilization without which
civilized man is far miserable than the meanest savage ….”
Godwin also championed the claim for abolition of right to property and authority and
held the ideal of a society with communist principle of distribution according to requirements.
Eleanor Marx and Aveling
therefore, rightly commented, “……undoubtedly Shelley
knew the real economic value of private property in the means of production and distribution,
whether it was in the machinery, land funds, what not……..A socialist believes that these means
of production and distribution should be the property of the community”. – quote from Edward
and Eleanor.
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Shelley championed for freedom and liberty. Prometheus Unbound thus became a superb
creation championing this idea of freedom and liberty. His deeply anguished feeling at the
bondage of the women in a male dominated society – both feudal and capitalist societies was
expressed in his direct question, “can man be free if the woman be a slave?” (Revolt of Islam)
3.6. The Mask of Anarchy
‘Mask of Anarchy’ is in colloquial ballad form with simple four stress metre. Shelley
designed it as a poem with popular appeal that might seize the moment if indignation expresses it
fervently and memorably.2
The poem is in three main sections. First paragraph presents a vitriolic satire on the
Government of the day. Ina a brilliant reversal of the official view of events the Prime Minister
Lord Liverpool and his ministers are commanded by Anarchy, an apocalyptic deity and in a
medieval masque dance of death; it is they who ride the horses that trampled the ‘Peterloo’ crowd
to death. But ironically Anarchy also governs the people who adore their own servitude, trapped
by what William Blake called ‘the mind- forged manacles’ of oppression.
This location introduces the figure of unarmed mother, Hope who is trampled under the
horses’ hooves as a sacrifice, only to be reborn (stanza 23), since Hope can never die. In the
second section of the poem (stanzas 34 to 63), Hope gives a long speech describing different
kinds of freedom. In stanzas 39-51 she exposes the false freedom of a society that exploits the
poor for the benefit of the rich. In stanzas 52-64, he presents a vision of true freedom made up of
equality, justice, peace and wisdom. In the third part, (stanzas 65-91), Hope calls for a series of
massive demonstrations throughout England to claim political rights and at this point it is
important to realize that, effectively, the poem is set before the ‘Peterloo’ massacre. For what
“Hope” predicts is that one such demonstration of passive resistance will suffer the fate of the
crowd at ‘Peterloo’. She insists that the crowds should face the bayonets and be massacred
because it will prove the iniquity of British Law and justice; this itself will result in a violent
reaction among the people including the British soldiers, who will feel so ashamed of what has
happened that they will turn instead to support those who desire freedom. The poem ends with a
clarion call for armed resistance.
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On 23rd September (1819) Shelley sent the poem to Leigh Hunt’s radical journal ‘The
Examiner’ expecting instant publication. He expected a widespread support to the call. But in the
meanwhile the Government violently suppressed the radical movement arresting all its leaders.
Leigh Hunt did not publish the poem fearing that the Government might react with severe
repressive actions as the political atmosphere was so at that time. Almost all the radical leaders
were imprisoned. Hence ‘The Mask of Anarchy, “England in 1819” went without publication till
1832. Though Shelley expected and wished to publish all these political poems immediately, it
did not take place.
All those poems were fiery denunciations of corruptions of England. The Sonnet,
‘England in 1819’ is a catalogue of oppressions. It opens by castigating King George III and the
corrupt court of the prince Regent in a startlingly frank manner. The damning adjectives of the
first line, “An old, mad, blind, despised and dying King”, are enforced by comma pauses while
the savage imagery – the aristocracy as ‘the dregs of their dull race’ and as ‘leech-like’ – drives
the angry tone. There is sharp irony and sarcasm in the description of the law as, “Golden and
sanguine”, while the image of the army as a ‘double edged sword’, contains a veiled threat that
the repressive force of rulers may back fire against them. This is a society of living death ‘graves’
but one which promises the rebirth of the ‘glorious phantom’ of liberty, yet this hope is severely
qualified by that word ‘phantom’ and ‘The Song to Men of England’ takes up the theme of
exploitation, which Shelley develops in his great political essay ‘A philosophical view of
Reform’. Its popular ballad form and direct address leave one in no doubt as to its intent, but
again it contains a sting in its tone by suggesting that the oppressed labourers are complicit in
their own subjection.
3.7 Dialectical Awareness
Shelley’s famous poem ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is read along with ‘Ode to a Skylark’ as
mere nature poems. But it had its genesis in the intense contradictions being enacted and felt in
the moment of ‘Peterloo’ massacre. These include Shelley’s dialectical awareness of the potential
for reform and at the same time his realization of the forces marshaled against change. As well as
this historical insight he also experienced personal feeling of inability and hopelessness generated
partly by his exile from England at this decisive time - a feeling of failure to catch up the tide of
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history in his role as a political poet. So behind what appears to be simply a lyrical poem, one has
seen a whole network of factors – historical, social, personal – leading to its composition.
Shelley’s ode sees the decay and corruption of autumn not with the fatalism as attributed
to it by many a critic, he sees autumn as a necessary part of the process of leading to renewal.
Shelley’s west wind is the embodiment of transformation connecting natural and social change.
The poem links these to the role of the poet as a breath of inspiration like the wind, a liberator
challenging melancholy, a prophetic clarion heralding new dawn. Shelley sees the west wind as
the spirit of revolutionary turmoil, embodying the contradictory forces of history and as the spirit
of poetic inspiration.
Another point of reckoning and relevant to their discussion is, the same, poet has
remodeled and created the hero of his ‘Prometheus Unbound’ as one who would not quail before
his oppressor (Jupiter) even in the face of severest torments. If it is so for the literary creation, he
could not have dreamt of calling the struggling workers to submit slavishly before the oppressors.
Further, the mood of the poet at that time was on the upbeat, invoking the ‘West wind’ to usher in
the revolutionary change by driving away the old order. With this mindset, even to imagine that
he would have asked the workers to be submissive to the attacking forces is ridiculous. Even from
his school days, he hated tyranny and oppression as he resisted “Fagging” in Eton School. So to
think of calling upon people to be submissive before tyranny is incongruous.
Hence the researcher emphatically contends that Gandhiji’s contention of the ‘‘The Mask
of Anarchy’ advocating submissiveness to brute force is wrong. And the researcher reiterates time
and again his unassailable faith in and adoration for Gandhiji’s leadership in the freedom
struggles of India and he remains the tallest leader of the Indian people.
Tamil poet, Bharathidasan upholds the legacy of Shelley highlighting and adoring the
creativity of work force. For example, his 'Bilhaniyam' in 'Puratchikavithai' adores the creative
power of workers on fileds and factories. Also his song of 'Ulagappan' gives a radical solution to
the agrarian usurpation of lands (Odappar - poem).3
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Like this very many generations of poets and writers world over, inherit the legacy of
freedom, liberty, equality, humanism and gender equality as propagated by Shelley and these
traditions are flourishing well.
3.8 Shelley’s Revolutionary Thinking
3.8.1. Different Handling of the Myth By Aeschylus And Shelley
For Shelley, the uncompromising revolutionary, the capitulation of Prometheus, the
invisible champion of human race to the omnipotent tyranny of divine despot- as depicted by the
ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus, was too hard a fact to swallow. So he altered the catastrophe
and made the Titan triumphant over the ‘wicked’ tyrant.
In the preface to the play, he himself has explained the whole problem: “The Prometheus
Unbound of Aeschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the
disclosure of the danger threatening his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis.
Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules….I was averse
from a catastrophe as feeble as that of reconciling the champion with the oppressor of mankind.
The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by sufferings and endurance of
Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and
quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary”.
In the light of this peculiar moral bias which paints the final victory of good over evil, the
principal characters had to be altered. Prometheus, while retaining his heroic stature and
invincibility of spirit, becomes the type of spirit, becomes the type of highest perfection of moral
and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and truest motives to the best and noblest ends. The
exaltation of the champion necessitated the degradation of Jupiter who becomes a type of moral
wickedness. The tyrant enslaves the human soul, disfigures human nature and converts the green
earth into a wide hecatomb, loaded with groaning victims writhing in the extreme agony of body
and mind.
Shelley’s lyrical drama is not a mere interpretation of the old myth, but it is rather the
creation of the new one on the basis of certain materials provided by the Greek play by
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Aeschylus. Shelley himself has frankly admitted the fact: “My Prometheus is, in my judgment of
higher character than anything I have yet attempted and is perhaps less of an imitation of anything
that has gone before it. It has no resemblance to Greek drama; it is original and cost me several
labour’.
While, the titan of Aeschylus remains unchanged in his implacable detestation of Jupiter
and all the epicurean Gods around him, Shelley’s champion has been transformed by his
sufferings and confesses ….:“I hate no more
As then, ere misery made me wise”.
Suffering has made the Shelleyan champion almost a Christ like figure, patient, forgiving
and pitiful. As a revolutionary writer, Shelley was sworn enemy of tyranny and state. He used
every opportunity to expose promptly the tyranny and state machinery.
3.9. Utilised the death of Princess Charlotte
In the name of addressing the people to mourn the death of Princess Charlotte, Shelley
exposed the unjust execution of three labourers and argued demanding political and economic
reform. Princess Charlotte, the daughter of the despised Prince Regent, died on 6th of November
1817 in childbirth and this became an occasion for Shelley’s most incisive political pamphlet.
Charlotte was seen as more sympathetic towards reform than either her degenerate father or her
grandfather, King George III. Her death coincided with the judicial murder of three poor labourers
– Jeremy Brandeth ( a self-educated Baptist), Issac Ludlam (a Methodist preacher) and William
Turner (a stone mason) who had been tried for high treason because of their involvement in
protest against rural poverty. Their insurrection was abetted by a Government sponsored spy
named Oliver, while the jury for the trial was the hand-picked by the authorities. After conviction
they were hanged publicly and decapitated. In his powerful pamphlet Shelley mourned all these
deaths and demanded political reforms.
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3.10. ‘Revolution Alone Can Destroy Tyranny’
Shelley’s sympathy was pronounced. The shooting of unarmed workers in Manchester in
1819 made him believe that revolution alone can destroy tyranny. In his lyrical and epical poem
‘Queen Mab’, he describes the sufferings of the working class and his indignation against their
oppressors. He was the first poet of the rising Industrial age to show the awakening of class
consciousness of the workers. Decades before, Proudhan called rich men thieves, who reap the
advantages from the labour of the poor people. Proudhan gave a call to destroy the power of the
few over the many.
In 1817, Shelley wrote ‘Laon and Cythna’, later known as “The Revolt of Islam”. It gave
an impassioned vision of the French Revolution and half a century of revolutionary democratic
struggles in England and Ireland. In his major work ‘Prometheus Unbound ‘ (1820), Shelley
presents the future society as one without ‘tribes and nations, without class-oppression. Realistic
tendencies are more prominent in the works of 1819-1821. The unfinished historical drama,
‘Charles I’, portrays the events of the 17th century revolution, the first anger of the people against
monarchy.
3.11. Prophecy of Peace and Freedom
His description of nature is full of deep philosophical meaning. Comparing the laws of
development of nature and society, the poet comes to the conclusion that just as spring comes
after winter, an era of peace and freedom will come after a century of wars and reaction. Shelley
is a poet of the period, when the concept of fully scientific socialism was yet to come. But unlike
the reformers and utopians, he was against the illusions of the possibility of peaceful destruction
of hired slavery and called upon the people to struggle for freedom. His writings enriched the
revolutionary labour movement of England and other countries. Influenced by Shelley in his
early youth, Fredrick Engels called him a genius and prophet and emphasized that Shelley was a
distinguished educator of the working class of Britain.
Shelley, through and through a foe to tyranny in the Abstract and in Concrete Form, has
written, in poem ‘On Liberty’ (1820),
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“From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation On Liberty’ (1820)
From city to hamlet, thy dawning is cast
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night
In the van of the morning light”
3.12 On Tyranny in the Concrete
He had written a lot condemning Napoleon as a tyrant. He condemned the domestic
tyrants in equal terms, In ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, and Eldon are all
personally gibbeted. In each case not only the mere man but the infamous principles he
represented is the object of attack. To Shelley, just as the Prince Regent was embodied as princeship and Napoleon as personal greed and tyranny, so Castlereagh (the Chief Secretary for Ireland,
before he was War Minister) was embodied as war and Government, Sidmouth (the Home
secretary at the time of Peterloo) embodied as officialism and Eldon embodied law. He is forever
denouncing priests and kings and statesmen:
“Kings, priests and statesmen blast the human flower
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts
Like sudden poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society” – Queen Mab F-ii 454, I s 104-107
But he does not fail to link these with the basis on which nowadays our commercial
system rest.
“Commerce has set the mark of selfishness
The signet of its all – enslaving power
Upon the shining ore and called it gold …
Gold is a living God and rules in scorn
All earthly things, but virtue.”
“Since tyrants by the sale of human life
Heap luxuries to their sensualism and fame
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Even as the slaves by force or famine driven
Beneath a vulgar, to perform
A task of cold and brutal drudgery.” (Queen Mab)
‘Ozymandias’ (1819) is also an attack on tyranny and power, something he frequently
refers to in other works like ‘Prometheus Unbound’. (1819)
3.13 His perception of the class struggle
More than anything else what makes people claim Shelley as a socialist is his singular
understanding of the facts that tyranny resolves itself into the tyranny of the possessing class over
the producing and that this tyranny in the ultimate analysis is traceable almost all evil and misery.
He saw that the so called middle class (of his time) is the real tyrant, the real danger at that time.
To take a quotation from the 'philosophic view of reform'
“One of the vaunted effects of this system is to increase the national industry that is to
increase the labours of the poor and those luxuries, which they supply the rich; to make a
manufacturer (as we now say, an operative or artisan) work sixteen hours where he had only
worked eight; to turn children into lifeless and bloodless machines at an age when otherwise they
would be at play before the cottage doors of their parents, to augment indefinitely the proportion
of those who enjoy the profit of the labour of others as compared with those who exercise this
labour.
Even when he uses the phrase 'privileged class' in the philosophic view of reform, it is
clear he is thinking of them as a whole in contradistinction to the class, destitute of every
privilege. Describing Wales as the stronghold of vulgar and common- place prejudices of
aristocracy, and villainy of lawyers, which all ground the poor, there the peasants were serfs and
were fed and lodged worse than pigs.
In Peter Bell III, he narrates the existence of class contradictions in the city of London:
“There is a chancery court; a king
A manufacturing mob, a set
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Of thieves who by themselves are sent
Similar thieves to represent.
An army and a public debt. (ll.162-166)
Lawyers – judges -old hobnobbers
Are there – bailiffs – chancellors
Bishops – great and little robbers
Rhymesters – pamphleteers stock jobbers
Men of glory in the wars”
3.14. Conclusion
Right from his childhood, Shelley remained a rebel and grew up to be a revolutionary. He
revolted against all types of oppressions, be it in school or in college or in society. Through his
writings, he raised up the awakening of the people against oppressive social system and rulers and
called upon them to revolt against the rulers. His call to people of England ‘to rise like lions after
slumber – in unvanquishable number’ against the oppressive Government and its forces reveals
his revolutionary spirit. In the literary creations, the creation of Prometheus Unbound, the
uncompromising hero reveals Shelley’s revolutionary character as a poet. Finally he concluded
that a class struggle of people alone can remove tyranny.
Notes
1) Reiman Donald H & Neil Fraistat, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose – Norton critical edition,
Second edition,W.W.Norton & Company, New York2007 P 206)
2) Woodcock, Bruce Ed, ‘The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley’ - Wordsworth Poetry
Library, Wordsworth Editions, London, 2002 From Introduction P xxxi.
3) Bharatidasan, in his song of 'Ulagappan' (Odappar - poem).
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