Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley addresses the west wind as both destroyer and preserver, asking it to scatter his words like leaves or sparks. The poem was written in 1819 and published in 1820 in Prometheus Unbound and Other Poems.

Ozymandias describes a ruined statue in the desert with an inscription boasting of power. Its compact sonnet form makes a sharp political point about empire, time, and the collapse of human pride.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was married to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. The couple spent time with Lord Byron in Switzerland in 1816, the same summer often linked to the origins of Frankenstein.

Shelley was associated with radical views on monarchy, religion, marriage, and social reform. Works such as The Mask of Anarchy, written after the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, show his political anger in poetic form.