1824 (posthumous) ‘The Triumph of Life’

In ‘The Triumph of Life’ the image of the new moon foreshadows an impending storm. Perhaps this image came from ‘Spens’ or indirectly through Coleridge, whose influence is evident elsewhere in Shelley’s verse.

Selected Criticism:

Donald H. Reiman, Shelley’s ‘The Triumph of Life’: A Critical Study (Urbana, University of Illinois Press: 1965), p. 129. JSTOR

Joseph Raben, ‘Coleridge as The Prototype of The Poet in Shelley’s Alastor.’ The Review of English Studies. Vol. 17, No. 67 (1966), p. 291. Oxford Journals

Links: PoemHunter; GoogleBooks

[Excerpt]

When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.–
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon

When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might

Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of her dead Mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark ether from her infant’s chair,
So came a chariot on the silent storm