In class we have been reading Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni.” Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4th, 1792 in Sussex, England. Shelley was accepted at the University College, Oxford, in 1810. Oxford was a prestigious University where many other famous writers also attended throughout the years. Shelley was known as an English romantic writer who was published when he was only seventeen years of age, even before he had entered Oxford. He would also refer to himself as an atheist and would often state that religion was a distraction.

Percy Shelley’s five-part poem touches on many themes but the most important one is the theme of the power of nature and the scenery of a mountain in the alps. This theme is emphasized throughout the whole poem. He chooses to exclude any kind of religion or God in his poem. The poem consists of five stanzas. In the first stanza, Shelley speaks about “the everlasting universe of things” (line 1). By those “things” one could say or infer that they are thoughts in the mind of a human. He then goes to describes these things as “rapid waves’, “secret springs”, and “vast rivers”. Thoughts flow like river. They are endless and flow in many different directions. The secret springs could be a metaphor for the deep dark thoughts hidden in the back of our minds. This is why one could infer that he is using all these words as metaphors for “thoughts” that nature is flowing into the mind.

Shelley than leads us into the second stanza. The second stanza seems to be about the mountain he refers to throughout the whole poem. He describes the mountain as being majestic with all its “giant brood of pines around thee clinging” (line 20) with “…their odours, and their mighty swinging” (line 24). He is describing the huge trees in the great big mountain. The mountain and nature in it is so overtaking to him that he becomes dizzy. Although it is the literal explanation of stanza two, alternate interpretation could be that Percy Shelley is describing the thoughts in his head. They are so immense and strong, that they make him dizzy. All these thoughts and feelings become “the sublime. He cannot grasp them all at once. It also connects to the interpretation in stanza one. Shelley reflects it all on the mountain.

In stanza three, Shelley changes the tone of the poem. He starts it with “Some say that gleams of a remoter world / Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber, / And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber” (lines 51-52). He goes from talking about all these static feelings about nature to referring to darkness and death. These dark forces visit the human mind at night and haunt the mind. He also states “thoughts” in this stanza, once again making a reader believe that his words about nature are metaphors for his thoughts and mind. He ends stanza three by stating that “by all, but which the wise, and great, and good, / Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. (Lines 82-83). Here one can interpret that Shelley believes that only the wise can experience nature in this way; that nature can fill the mind with all this power and knowledge rather than God.

At the second to last stanza, Percy Shelley amplifies beyond the mountain he is describing. “The limits of the dead and living world, / Never to be reclaim’d. The dwelling-place / Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;” (Lines 113-15). Here starts talking about nature and human life and how nature has lived longer than any human in the world. He also states that we as humans will always die, we will never be immortal like nature has been throughout all these decades. Another interpretation that could take place here is that thoughts and feelings are not endless. They die with us when we are gone, but our spirits linger amongst all the nature, haunting it. The mountain is Shelley’s brain with all this inside it, and he choose to write a poem to share it with the world.

In the last stanza, Shelley leaves the darkness he has entered in stanzas three and four and goes back to describing the mountain. He ends the poem with “And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, / If to the human mind’s imaginings / Silence and solitude were vacancy?” (lines 142-45) He refers to the mountain as the spirit. This is the spirit of nature itself. Nature allows him to absorb this obscure knowledge that invades him with loneliness. It sounds as if it were him dying on this mountain and he were being called by nature rather than God. A reader could even picture the spirit of Shelley descending into nature with the rest of the ghosts that inhabit it. This poem is filled with greatness and mystery. It is a great thing that there could be so many interpretations of it. Feelings, thoughts. He seemed to rely more toward the power of nature rather than a power of religion like it was accustomed back in his days.

Discussion Questions:

• Do you agree or disagree that the power of nature is actually God in Shelley’s poem?
• How does Percy Shelley reflect his atheism in “Mont Blanc”?
• How does Percy Shelley use nature to demonstrate romanticism?