Attempt a critical appreciation of
Shelley’s Lines Written on the Euganean Hills.
Or
Critically examine the theme, imagery
and symbols of Shelley’s Lines Written on the Euganean Hills.
Lines
Written Among the Euganean Hills appeared in the Rosalind and Helen volume
of 1819. In his prefatory advertisement to this volume, Shelley said that Lines
written Among the Euganean Hills was composed by him, “after a day’s
excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat
and where is now the sepulchre of Petrarch.”
The poem seems to be firmly grounded on actual experience.
Though
sadness in the poet’s personal life is the theme of the poem, Shelley does his
best to shake it off by musing on the sea of misery:
“Many
a green isle needs must be,
In
the deep wide sea of misery”
The
central motif of the poem is of death and rebirth. This experience comes to the
poet when a flock of rooks like “night’s dreams and terrors” flee
leaving the poet on those green isles where “all is bright and clear and
still.” In the view of an eminent critic, “this is a fundamentally
optimistic poem.”
