A Dirge
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b0/Posthumous_Poems_Percy_B._Shelley_1824.jpg/220px-Posthumous_Poems_Percy_B._Shelley_1824.jpg)
"A Dirge" is a poetic dirge composed by Percy Bysshe Shelley.[1] It was published posthumously in 1824 by his wife, Mary Shelley, in the collection Posthumous Poems.[2][3] The text has been set to music by Frank Bridge, Charles Ives, Ottorino Resphigi, Roy Ewing Agnew, and Benjamin Britten.
Structure
The rhyme scheme of the eight lines is ABAB CCCB. The triplet of vain/strain/main in the second half of the poem adds to the sense of the piling up of emotions. It also has the effect of slowing down the poem.
Summary
The dominant themes of the poem are isolation, loneliness, and death. It is a scene of desolation and despair. The wind moans in a grief that cannot be expressed in words; the rain storm billows in vain; the trees are barren and their branches strain under the unceasing onslaught. A gloom pervades the world.
A dirge is a song meant to invoke and express the emotions of grief and mourning that are typical of a funeral. Images of nature are used to symbolize the grief he feels, such as the moaning and wild wind, the sullen clouds, the sad storm, the bare woods, the deep caves, and the dreary main. He imbues his natural surroundings with anthropomorphic characteristics and qualities to express his grief. The nouns are modified by adjectives that give them human attributes and traits to express his own emotions of dreariness and sadness. He concludes that the whole world is “wrong” and is grieving.
Shelley wrote the poem after the deaths of his friend John Keats and his son William who were buried in a cemetery in Rome. The untimely death of Keats reopened the floodgates of emotion for Shelley, inevitably leading him to reexperience the sadness and pain he felt for the death of his infant son.
In the second line, “Grief too sad for song,” Shelley argued that the grief was ineffable, inexpressible in words. There is no solace. The entire world is “wrong.”
The last line, “Wail, for the world’s wrong!”, provides a sense of hope and consolation.
Poem
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/38px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png)
Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—
Wail, for the world's wrong!
References
- v
- t
- e
- The Cenci (1819)
- Prometheus Unbound (1820)
- Hellas (1822)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley_by_Alfred_Clint.jpg/120px-Percy_Bysshe_Shelley_by_Alfred_Clint.jpg)
- Zastrozzi (1810)
- St. Irvyne (1811)
- "The Necessity of Atheism" (1811)
- "Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things" (1811)
- "A Letter to Lord Ellenborough" (1812)
- A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)
- History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817)
- "On Frankenstein" (1817, published 1832)
- A Philosophical View of Reform (1819–20, published 1920)
- "A Defence of Poetry" (published posthumously, 1840)
- "The Devil's Walk" (1812)
- "Mutability" (1816)
- "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (1817)
- "Mont Blanc" (1817)
- "Ozymandias" (1818)
- "Love's Philosophy" (1819)
- "Ode to the West Wind" (1820)
- "To a Skylark" (1820)
- "The Cloud" (1820)
- "One Word is Too Often Profaned" (1822)
- "Music, When Soft Voices Die" (1824)
- "A Dirge" (1824)
- "England in 1819" (1834)
- Queen Mab (1813)
- Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816)
- The Revolt of Islam (1818)
- Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue (1819)
- Epipsychidion (1821)
- Adonaïs (1821)
- Julian and Maddalo (1824)
- The Witch of Atlas (1824)
- The Triumph of Life (1824)
- The Masque of Anarchy (1832)
Mary Shelley
- History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817)
- Proserpine (1820)
- Midas (1820)
- Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit (1822)
- Wolfstein, The Murderer; or, The Secrets of a Robber's Cave (1850)
- Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline (1977)
- Zastrozzi, A Romance (1986)
- Frankenstein authorship question
- The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
- Mary Shelley (wife)
- Sir Percy Shelley, 3rd Baronet (son)
- Timothy Shelley (father)
- Sir Bysshe Shelley (grandfather)
- Lord Byron
- Claire Clairmont
- William Godwin (father-in-law)
- Thomas Jefferson Hogg
- John Keats
- Thomas Medwin
- Thomas Love Peacock
- Edward John Trelawny
- The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Shelley's Vegetarianism
- Shelley: A Life Story
- Bride of Frankenstein (1935 film)
- Bloody Poetry (1984 play)
- Gothic (1986 film)
- Haunted Summer (1988 film)
- Rowing with the Wind (1988 film)
- Mary Shelley (2017 film)
- "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" (2020 TV episode)