The Cold Earth Slept Below - Percy Byshee Shelley

Question 1

What type of family did Shelley come from?

Answer 1

-Wealthy family> set to inherit his Grandfathers role as an MP

Question 2

Who did Shelley elope to age 19?

Answer 2

Harriet Westbrook with whom he moved to the Lake District

Question 3

what did Shelley do 3 years after getting eloped to Harriet?

Answer 3

-Left for Europe with another woman > Mary Godwin

Question 4

What year did Harriet take her own life?

Answer 4

1816

Question 5

How was Shelley seen to be the most political out of the Romantic poets?

Answer 5

-Circulated pamphlets in Dublin > advocating political rights for catholic

Question 6

Why was Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg expelled from Oxford in 1811?

Answer 6

-Refusing Shelley’s authorship of ‘the necessity of atheism’

Question 7

Why was Harriet Westbrook suspected to haven taken her life for?

Answer 7

-Due to her love for Shelley

Question 8

Was Shelley able to take guardianship over his children Ianthe and Charles after Harriet’s death?

Answer 8

No

Question 9

What was the Great Terror of 1792?

Answer 9

Kings supporters executed

Question 10

What year was Shelley born?

Answer 10

1792

Question 11

What was mainly channeled through his poetry?

Answer 11

-Passionate search for personal love
-Social justice

Question 12

Who could be the subject of the poem?

Answer 12

-Shelley’s first wife Harriet Westbrook committed suicide in 1816

Question 13

What is the overall tone and mood of the poem?

Answer 13

-variety of contrasting images and symbols > message and tone more complicated than it seems
-Sleep, winter and nigh > used to convey death

Question 14

How is the supernatural presented in the poem?

Answer 14

-Imagery to depict a body/the dying light of the moon mirrors the dying person
-A fen-fire > attacks travellers to their death
-glowing eyes > represent life > ironic element
-Raven as a symbol of death

Question 15

What is the form of the poem?

Answer 15

-Seen as a sort of eulogy > First half is about nature and setting / second half is about the dead body > almost cyclical as earth and its breath introduced at beginning and end.

Question 16

What Is the meter of the poem?

Answer 16

-Iambic tetrameter
-Spondaic > The Heavy rhythm of the first two lines contrasts to the simplistic, upbeat and childish rhythm of the second stanza created by the Internal rhyme and anapaest
-presents contrast between life and death

Question 17

What is significant about the pattern of internal rhyme throughout the 3rd line?

Answer 17

‘breath’ and ‘death’
‘Green’ and ‘seen’
echoes ghastly quality and creepy simplistic sounds > eerie

Question 18

What is the significance of the personification in “The cold death slept below”?

Answer 18

-Nature has life but the person is not > reborn into nature or emphasises lifelessness through the juxtaposition

Question 19

What is significant about “below”?

Answer 19

-In the ground like a grave

Question 20

How is a chilled image of the earth presented?

Answer 20

-“cold”
-“chilling”

Question 21

where are the landscapes presented to have their own presences?

Answer 21

-“from caves of ice and fields of snow’
-feels dark and malignant

Question 22

what is significant about “breath of night” and “sinking moon”?

Answer 22

-Everything will be consumed by darkness soon - death
-Darkness > feels like death > creates fearful scene

Question 23

What is significant about “The green grass was not seen”?

Answer 23

-Juxtaposition of nature > co-existence of opposite forces

Question 24

What is significant by describing the scene as “black”?

Answer 24

-Pathetic fallacy > death and loss
-Eerie feeling of danger

Question 25

What does the change in the path in stanza 2 signify?

Answer 25

-Change in the journey of his life > sudden realisation to make different decisions > perhaps due to the fear of death

Question 26

What is significant about “frozen dew”?

Answer 26

-compares tears shed in the night
-Frozen perhaps due to time no longer a thing for the dead body > she is dead no ageing > frozen in time

Question 27

What is significant about the last two lines of the poem?

Answer 27

-Hopeful tone
-Feels moved > feeling of the sublime