Inspired by Luke Howard’s groundbreaking Essay on the Modifications of Clouds, the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley penned his poem The Cloud, an example of personification. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Shelley’s “The Cloud””
We were talking earlier about Luke Howard, the Englishman who founded modern meteorology by starting to classify clouds with different kinds of language, with Latin words.
And his influence extended not only to Goethe, the poet, as I said, but to the painter John Constable and Percy Shelley, the poet. All of these people were inspired by this whole idea of classifying clouds. And Percy Shelley wrote a poem called The Cloud, and it’s long, so I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’m going to read the first stanza, which will give you a taste of it.
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers from the seas and streams. I bear light shade for the leaves when laid in their noonday dreams. For my wings are shaken, the dews that waken, the sweet buds every one. When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast as she dances about the sun, I wield the flail of the lashing hail and whiten the green plains under. And then again, I dissolve it in rain and laugh as I pass in thunder.
And it’s so beautiful and rhythmic and so much imagery and should be a poem that’s taught when you’re talking about personification in English class. It’s really a lovely poem that goes on and on.
And that’s Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poem is called? The Cloud.
The Cloud. Thanks, Martha. That was beautiful. Call us, 877-929-9673.
