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’ > taking your last breath
‘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