Hymn To Intellectual Beauty

Poetry is an abstract form of a person 's thoughts manifested in the written language and I just do not get it. Within all languages is the ability to describe and write what we feel in the most descriptive and in-depth way. We can explain exactly what we mean, how we want it to come across using tone, and still be able to leave room for imagination to make up its own mind as to what is written. To me, Poetry is usually a guessing game. I break down the lines of the poem and try my best to decipher them; however, I do not know if I am truly able to get the author 's meaning. Poetry is hard for me because nothing is set in stone. Everything is up to interpretation depending on previous experiences and our own thoughts. Even though poetry is …show more content…
I take this to mean that men can be corrupt and evil all while having high self regard. High self esteem can turn into an awful form of pride and the person could potentially become vain. This can lead to a person becoming corrupt, having a bad influence on other people, and resulting in a bad society that has a lack of beauty for man and nature. Shelley’s ideal characteristics are then describe through the effects they have on human beings. The particular focus of love begins with “That wax and wane of lover’s eyes/though that to human though art nourishment”. Going back to the romanics belief in the importance of nature, I feel that Shelly is illustrating the love of nature and love being a main factor in life. To me, Shelly was really trying to stress the importance of nature as a valued ideal for the romantic time period. The rest of the poem is a continual piece addressing how life is not worth living without love, which is stated by Shelley as “Depart not- lest the grave should be/life life and fear, a dark reality”. I believe this illustrates the ideals of