An excerpt from the book - Peter Bells, one, two and three, O'er the wide world wandering be.— First, the antenatal Peter, Wrapped in weeds of the same metre, The so-long-predestined raiment _5 Clothed in which to walk his way meant The second Peter; whose ambition Is to link the proposition, As the mean of two extremes— (This was learned from Aldric's themes) _10 Shielding from the guilt of schism The orthodoxal syllogism; The First Peter—he who was Like the shadow in the glass Of the second, yet unripe, _15 His substantial antitype.— Then came Peter Bell the Second, Who henceforward must be reckoned The body of a double soul, And that portion of the whole _20 Without which the rest would seem Ends of a disjointed dream.— And the Third is he who has O'er the grave been forced to pass To the other side, which is,— _25 Go and try else,—just like this.
Author
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy. However, his major works were long visionary poems including Alastor, Adonais, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life. Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a authoritative and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy. He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and Bertrand Russell. Famous for his association with his contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was also married to novelist Mary Shelley.
