Ode To The West Wind - Conclusion

Conclusion

This poem is a highly controlled text about the role of the poet as the agent of political and moral change. This was a subject Shelley wrote a great deal about, especially around 1819, with this strongest version of it articulated the last famous lines of his "Defence of Poetry": "Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the most unacknowledged legislators of the world."

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Famous quotes containing the word conclusion:

    So this
    Is man; so—what better conclusion is there—
    The day will not follow night, and the heart
    Of man has a little dignity, but less patience
    Than a wolf’s,
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)

    of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness
    of the flesh.
    Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep
    his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
    Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes (l. XII, 13)