Tuesday, December 3, 2013

What is the meaning of Shelley's "To--"?

The poem is a brief treatise on the nature of reality. On
the one hand we have actuality—the actuality of music, sweet-smelling flowers, rose
leaves, and the thoughtful person being addressed by the poet. The speaker of the poem
advocates the Platonic position that the reality of sense and thought persists even
though the specific originators of sense and thought may vanish. In other words, the
reality of things exists in human perceptions of things, and the transcendent reality
which human beings may personify belong to an order higher than human beings, by
themselves, can reach. These ideas especially apply to the listener, whose loving nature
will be transferred, when the listener is “gone” (line 7) to become a part of the very
personification of Love (“Love itself,” line 8). By equating the listener with Love, the
speaker makes the highest possible compliment to the listener.

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