The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears

Of their moon-freezing crystals…

There are two epithets ("crawling", "moon-freezing"), two nouns ("spears" and "crystals") and one verb ("pierce") that are in the present context metaphorical. Further comes the oxymoron of "burning cold", the powerful periphrase of "Heaven's winged hound" (for "eagle") that differs form the classicist periphrase in its emotional and physical concreteness. So do the other tropes quoted above.

When Prometheus complains that rivets are wrenched from his wounds, that he is afflicted by howls and keen hail, all these things have a physical reality. So much so, in fact, that they make us forget that the "reality" belongs to the world of fancy: the rivets are wrenched by Earthquake-fiends, the howls and the hair are produced by genii of the storm − just what one would expect fiends and genii to do, for Shelley has a truly romantic insight into imaginary things.

Almost every word, except, obviously, prepositions, conjunctions and the like, conveys a certain image, whether auditory or visual. For example:

While from their loud abysses howling throng

The genii of the storm, urging the rage

Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.

The "loud abysses" (a remarkable auditory metaphor which one would need a sentence to paraphrase), the "genii of the storm" that "throng" (another metaphor!) "howling" (an uncanny detail, adding the weird music of terrifying sound to physical torture), that urge "the rage of whirlwind and afflict… with keen hail" − make up a veritable pile of metaphors rendering the concentration of horrors that lacerate the crucified Titan.

In this drama all is on the grandest scale, in time as well as in space. Prometheus mentions three thousand years, he repeats again and again "ever", "for ever", "aye", "there is no change", "no pause" − he is doomed in eternity. Even the briefest units of time (moments) are "aye divided by keen pangs / Till they seemed years". To harmonize with this, not only is the reader faced with eternity, but also with infinity: the mountains are of a size that baffles the very eagles, all round are abysses and precipices, bright and rolling worlds, empires, hecatombs, to say nothing of Sun, Heaven and Sea. All this immensity of space is alive with movement, it throngs, it howls, it is caught up in a whirlwind.

All the stylistic elements of the poem are subservient to the main task of rendering this infinite and eternal world of struggle and pain. The syntax is, accordingly, involved and elaborately dignified. The periods sometimes include several lines and some complex clauses, mostly attributive, as in the first lines:

Monarch of Gods and Daemons, and All Spirits

But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds

Which Thou and I alone of living things

Behold with sleepless eyes! Regard this Earth

Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1360