The Question Flashcards
1
Q
Context
A
The dreaming speaker of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Question” wanders through a lush imaginary garden that’s bursting with colorful plants and flowers. Inspired by all this beauty, the speaker makes a small bouquet to bring back from dream-land but isn’t sure “to whom” this souvenir should be given. This garden can be read as a symbol of the artistic imagination, where inspiration blooms like flowers in spring. The speaker, meanwhile, seems to stand in for the poet: someone who tries to gather up and share all that beauty through art. The poem’s final “Question,” in turn, hints that it’s natural for artists to want to share their creations and that the prospect of finding an audience to appreciate their work can be daunting! “The Question” was published in 1822, as part of Leigh Hunt’s Literary Pocket-Book series. With its rich natural imagery and focus on inspiration, “The Question” is a prime example of Romantic poetry.
2
Q
Poetry and artistic inspiration
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- “The Question” presents the imagination as a lush garden: a place where poetic inspiration grows like flowers. The poem follows the speaker’s dream of a gorgeous landscape in which an incredible display of spring flowers burst to life along a bubbling stream. Marveling at all this beauty, the speaker plucks a bouquet in order to share this vision with others. Reading the poem symbolically and taking the speaker as a stand-in for the poet, this experience in the garden of the imagination suggests that an artist’s role is to arrange what naturally grows in the mind.
- The speaker’s dream suggests the mind grows inspiration as freely as the earth grows plants and flowers. The speaker’s imaginary garden springs to life “suddenly,” suggesting the brain’s ability to create new worlds out of thin air. The speaker then “wander[s]” through this garden of the imagination the way one might move through a springtime field or meadow, noticing one incredible flower after another: variegated “wind-flowers and violets,” “pear[]”-coloured “Daisies,” and huge purple irises adorned with showy stripes of “white.” The lush splendor of this landscape suggests the fertility of the imagination, which never stops growing and producing new wonders.
- That the speaker arranges these “visionary flowers” into a bouquet further suggests that it’s not enough to simply enjoy the bounty the mind has to offer: being an artist, the poem hints, means taking all that inspiration and making it into something even more beautiful.
- Note, too, that the speaker also plucks an “array” of flowers in “the same hues” that appear in the garden—one from this bunch, one from another—so that they contrast with one another in the bouquet in the same way as they did “in their natural bowers.” This loyalty to the way the flowers looked as the speaker saw them alongside the stream suggests the desire to capture an initial inspiration faithfully—to “Ke[ep] these imprisoned children of the Hours / Within [the] hand.” In other words, the speaker wants to preserve the imagination’s wondrous natural beauty and the feelings it evokes.
- In this way, the poem illustrates one of the major tenets of Romanticism: poetry is an organic, living thing, an outpouring of deep, inspired feelings that grows as naturally as flowers do. It’s the artist’s job to arrange the flowers of inspiration into a pleasing shape.
3
Q
The Beauty and Power of imagination
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- In “The Question,” the imagination works like an alchemist, transforming real-world experiences into fresh new beauties. The poem’s speaker makes a journey through the “visionary” garden of the imagination, finding that the mind’s eye is equipped with all the sensuous and vivid detail of the real world. Imagination, the poem suggests, is boundlessly fertile, and there’s no limit to the creativity of the human mind.
- The speaker is amazed by the incredible beauty that resides behind one’s very eyelids. Dreaming of a garden, the speaker notices one beautiful flower after another: “faint oxlips” and “tender bluebells,” “cherry blossoms,” “wild roses,” “water-lilies,” and so on. The imagery is lush, evoking the abundance of all this scenery: the “ivy” is “serpentine” (or twisting and winding), its “dark buds and leaves, wandering astray,” and the “hedge” is “overhung” by a great oak.
- The speaker’s inner landscape thus reflects the beauty and majesty of the outside world. But unlike the outside world, it knows no limits. The speaker says the “azure, black, and […] gold [flowers]” in this garden are more stunning “than any wakened eyes behold.” This suggests these dream-flowers are even more beautiful than anything one could lay eyes on in real life. Imagination, then, is rooted in reality, but it grows far beyond what is possible or known. Indeed, the speaker describes “floating water-lilies” so “bright” they illuminate the tree hanging over them “with moonlight beams of their own watery light.” This again builds beyond what is possible; in real life, no flower is bright enough to actually illuminate the world around it. But these aren’t real flowers—they’re imaginary and therefore can be or do anything the speaker envisions them to. The human mind isn’t bound by the same rules as the outside world, and that’s what makes it so powerful.
- Adding to the idea, the speaker mentions white, cup-shaped flowers whose dew-filled petals are “yet drained not by the day.” This image suggests an endless supply of creative juices flow in this garden, never dampened or sapped by the drudgery of real life. The poem thus explores the incredible potency of the imagination. With the outside world providing raw materials, the mind can produce endlessly new and beautiful combinations.
4
Q
Artistry and audience
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- The speaker of “The Question” takes huge private delight in gathering a “nosegay” of poetry from the garden of the imagination. But upon completing this bouquet, the speaker is left with the big final “Question” of the title: who is this artwork for? Poetry, in “The Question,” involves both personal enjoyment and an urge to share—and there’s perhaps both excitement and anxiety in the thought that one doesn’t know who will appreciate one’s metaphorical bouquet once it’s plucked!
- The speaker’s urge to create an arrangement from this bountiful dream-garden comes from a place of pure delight, suggesting that artists make things because it gives them pleasure to do so. The speaker “wander[s]” around the garden of the imagination in a happy daze for a long time, drinking in the scenery, before being moved to create something new from it. The speaker doesn’t have a plan for this impulsive act of creation, instead seeming suddenly compelled to just do it.
- It isn’t until after making the bouquet that the speaker thinks to give it to someone. “Elate and gay”—that is, practically floating with the happiness of having created something beautiful—the speaker rushes back out from the imagination into the everyday world, bursting with the desire to share yet suddenly unsure of who will want what the speaker has made. When the speaker wonders “to whom” to “present” this creation, the poem raises a question all artists face when they reach the stage of wanting to share their work with others. The speaker is not sure who, if anyone, will appreciate his work!
- The poem thus illustrates that although art can be made joyously and from a place of purely personal desire and intrigue, it also can inspire the intense desire to share. This can cause anxiety and even suffering for artists since it isn’t guaranteed that every artwork will find an audience that appreciates it the way the artist does.
5
Q
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
A
- “The Question” begins with the speaker declaring that what follows happened in a dream. That is, the journey the speaker will go on to describe is an imaginary one, taking place within the speaker’s mind.
- Alliteration adds musicality to these opening lines and draws attention to important words. The /w/ sounds in “wandered” and “way” emphasize the speaker’s leisurely, meandering steps. The gentle sibilance of “suddenly,” “Spring,” and “steps,” meanwhile, helps to convey how swiftly and smoothly “Spring” arrives.
- Already, readers might begin to suspect that this scene is symbolic: the speaker isn’t simply describing a lovely springtime scene, but also trying to convey what inspiration feels like. “Bare Winter” evokes the uninspired mind, while the lush growth of “Spring” suggests a fertile imagination. That the transition between the seasons happens “suddenly” reflects the way inspiration can swiftly strike, while the fact that the speaker wanders, rather than charges ahead with clear purpose, hints that inspiration can’t be forced. It comes in a rush or a flash, seemingly of its own volition, and one must be calmly open to following where inspiration leads.
- Indeed, back in the speaker’s dream, the “gentle odours” of the new season—the soft, enticing scents of all flowers, grasses, and so on—lead the speaker “astray.” The delights of the imagination, this image suggests, lure the speaker from the beaten path.
6
Q
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved
A
- The second stanza expands on the speaker’s dream world, describing the lush flowers growing alongside the “stream” mentioned in the previous line. There are “pied wind-flowers” (that is, colorful anemones) and vivid “violets.”
- There are also “Daisies,” which the speaker calls “those pearled Arcturi of the earth.” Arcturus refers to one of the brightest stars in the night sky. The metaphor conveys the daisies’ intense, ethereal glow. They are the “constellated flower that never sets,” the speaker continues, comparing the little white flowers set against the dark ground to a cluster of stars (a group of “Acturi”) in the night sky. Unlike actual stars, however, the daisy “never sets.” Actual constellations disappear in daylight, as more distant stars get blocked by the brighter light of the sun. The daisies, however, shine night and day.
- The speaker next points out “Faint oxlips” and “tender bluebells,” flowers that are so delicate that they barely disturb the earth when they bloom.
- Again, there’s nothing frightening or harsh about this scene. All of nature—from the babbling stream to the shy turf to the gentle bluebells—seems soft, kind, and sweet. The imagination is a lovely, inviting place, the poem suggests, and also a place where one would do well to tread lightly. Were one to barrel through this dream-garden, they might accidentally tread on a flower or frighten away the “green arms” of the earth. Symbolically speaking, they might trample on the creative inspiration they seek. As with the mention of enticing smells in the first stanza, the images of flowers here imply that inspiration and creativity can’t be forced.
7
Q
and that tall flower that wets—
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
A
- The second stanza ends with the speaker describing a “tall,” unnamed “flower” whose petals fill up with rainwater and then, when a breeze blows, spill droplets onto the earth. The speaker presents this image using a mixture of simile, metaphor, and personification:
- First, the speaker uses a simile to compare the flower dribbling water onto the ground to a sweet and playful child.
“Its mother’s face” is a metaphor for the earth’s surface (“mother” here refers to “Mother Earth,” and it also builds on the simile of the previous line involving a child). “Heaven’s collected tears,” meanwhile, is a metaphor for the raindrops that have gathered in the flower’s petals. - Finally, the speaker compares the breeze (the “low wind”) to a “playmate.” When the personified flower “hears” the wind’s voice (i.e., when the breeze blows).
8
Q
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
A
- The speaker continues to describe more of this garden’s vibrant vegetation. There’s rosy “eglantine,” or sweetbriar; the green vines of the “cowbine” plant; and “may,” another wildflower, here described as possessing the pearly, otherworldly white of the moon. The variety of colors here conveys the richness and variety of the imagination. These lines are again very musical as well, thanks to /gr/ and /m/ alliteration (“grew,” “Green” and “moonlight-coloured may”) as well as /l/ consonance (“lush eglantine,” “moonlight-coloured”).
- There are also delicate “cherry-blossoms,” as well as some sort of “white cups”: flowers with cup-shaped petals that catch the glittering morning dew. In a metaphor, the speaker compares this “dew” to “wine,” adding to the scene’s sense of intoxicating joy. This metaphorical “wine” has not been “drained […] by the day,” meaning that the sunlight has not yet made the dew evaporate. The phrase “drained not by the day” might bring to mind the way that earthly cares (jobs, cleaning, cooking, and so on) often sap people of their creative juices. The flowers in this garden, by contrast, remain undrained; there’s no end to the “bright dew” of the speaker’s imagination!
9
Q
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
A
- Note, too, how the imagery in these lines highlights the overgrown quality of the garden. The “roses” aren’t prim and proper but “wild,” while the “ivy” grows in a “serpentine” way, its foliage winding like a snake and “wandering astray.” This description echoes the speaker’s own “wander[ing]” away from the beaten path in the poem’s first stanza. The implication, once again, is that creativity can’t be forced or rigidly controlled. The imagination is an untamed place that reveals itself to those who are willing to stray from the path and open themselves up to its wonders.
- The speaker adds that the flowers in the garden—bright blue, “black,” and ornate “gold”—are “Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.” In other words, these are no ordinary flowers of the real world; they’re flowers that can only be conjured by the mind. People can imagine things far more enchanting than anything they’ve ever seen in reality, the poem implies.
10
Q
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
A
- The water-lilies are so “bright,” the speaker continues, that they “lit the oak that overhung the hedge / With moonlight beams of their own watery light.”
- This is an allusion to a speech from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in which Mercutio describes Queen Mab, the fairy queen who feels people’s sleep with dreams. The allusion once again highlights the fact that Shelley’s poem is set in a dreamworld, while also paying tribute to one of history’s greatest imaginations!
- That the water-lilies are bright enough to illuminate the tree hanging over them is also a reminder of how much more potent these imaginary flowers are than ordinary ones. In real life, no flower glows bright enough to actually shed light on something else. But in the world of the imagination, flowers can be and do anything the speaker wants!
11
Q
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand
A
-In the final stanza, the speaker selects a handful of these “visionary flowers” to fashion a “nosegay” (a small bouquet).
- Note that Shelley may be alluding here to Canto 28 of Dante’s Purgatorio, a poem titled “Matilda Gathering Flowers.” The speaker of Dante’s poem watches a beautiful woman gathering flowers in a setting similar to that of “The Question.”
- Shelley’s poem has already nodded to Shakespeare a few times, and the copious literary allusions in “The Question” do more than reveal the poet’s erudition. They suggest that the imagination isn’t just a place informed by nature and real-world inspiration, but also a place where the work of other artists mixes in with one’s own thoughts and feelings to create something new.
The speaker goes on to say that this floral arrangement is “bound in such a way” that the bouquet as a whole honors all the colors that “in their natural bowers / Were mingled or opposed.” In other words, the speaker has carefully selected a flower here and a flower there and placed them in such a way that the bouquet captures the gist of what the speaker saw while wandering through this garden. The speaker can’t take the whole garden back to the real world upon waking from this dream, but this nosegay becomes a representation of it. - The bouquet, in turn, becomes a symbol for the poet’s work, plucked from the realm of the poet’s imagination. In creating this bouquet, the speaker has captured the “children of the Hours”—those flowers that bloom so briefly in the imagination—and turned them into someone one can hold in their “hand.” This image suggests that poetry is a way of preserving what one sees in the imagination—”bound” in a poem, the beauties the speaker “dreamed” can’t escape or be forgotten.
12
Q
—and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?
A
- After gathering this “nosegay,” the speaker, in a state of complete joy and happiness from all this heady beauty and inspiration, rushes back “to the spot whence I had come.” Presumably, this means the speaker wakes up from this dream, now longing to share this bouquet with someone else.
- Though the speaker seemed to pluck and arrange the flowers purely for the joy of it, upon returning to the real world the speaker feels the desire to “present it” to someone else. Symbolically, this suggests that the artist doesn’t necessarily create things for the purpose of showing them off, but also that it’s natural for the artist to want to share what they have made with other people.
- The poem ends as the speaker is suddenly struck with “The Question” of the poem’s title. “Oh!” the speaker exclaims, a visceral sound that suggests the shock and power of this question: “to whom,” exactly, will the speaker give this bouquet? Who will read the poet’s poem?
- That the poem ends on this question suggests its importance to the speaker, to Shelley, and to poets more generally. It hints at the reality that although there is great personal delight and fulfillment to be found in making art, there is also the anxiety and even fear that arises when it comes time to sharing this art with others. Will there be an audience for it? And what will happen when others see into the poet’s imaginings? Sharing is a vulnerable process, the poem hints, and entails opening up one’s dreams to others’ scrutiny.
13
Q
The Winter
A
In this poem, “Winter” symbolizes the absence of inspiration and creativity. Plants and flowers die or go dormant in winter, so the world appears “Bare”—undecorated, stripped down, and even desolate. This might suggest that in times when poetic inspiration is lacking, the poet feels lost and without purpose. Without creativity, life can feel bleak and meaningless. That this poem focuses on the transformation of the world into”Spring” perhaps suggests that this speaker has just come out of a period of writer’s block.
14
Q
Spring
A
In “The Question,” the arrival of spring symbolizes a burst of creativity and inspiration. The poem begins with the speaker declaring how “Bare Winter” is transformed “suddenly” into “Spring.” The barrenness of the winter world—a time of death and dormancy—gives way to the fresh growth of the new season. That this change happens “suddenly” reflects the swift, unpredictable way with which inspiration and creativity can strike. The speaker isn’t entirely in control of spring’s arrival, reflecting the Romantic notion that art itself is a kind of living, breathing entity that exists separate from an artist themselves. Once it arrives though—once inspiration strikes—the speaker is sure to follow where it leads, wandering away from the previous path and forging deeper into the world of the imagination.
15
Q
The landscape
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- The poem’s lush, colorful landscape symbolizes the incredible fertility and vibrancy of the imagination. The speaker enters this world in a dream; this garden isn’t real but rather a creation of the speaker’s mind. It’s positively bursting with colorful flowers that outshine any in the waking world and whose “gentle odours” lure the speaker deeper and deeper into this dream.
- The sheer variety of flowers hints at the immense depths of the imagination—and the ways that the poet can “arrange” what they encounter there. Indeed, that the speaker’s garden is so full to bursting suggests that there is seemingly no end to the possibilities of the mind. This is a place where the “bright dew” captured in a petal’s cup has yet to be “drained […] by the day”; the water has yet to evaporate and instead sits waiting, perhaps for the thirsty speaker to drink it up.
- Note, too, that the garden of the poem is a gentle, sweet, lovely place that must be explored with an open heart and mind. The speaker doesn’t go trampling through these plants but rather “wander[s]” among them. And the speaker describes the garden life itself as gentle and delicate: the “green arms” of the earth “hardly dare[]” to wrap themselves around “the stream”; “tender bluebells” bloom without disturbing the ground; a tall flower joyfully “wets” the ground as a playful breeze shakes its petals.
- All this tender imagery implies that imagination and creativity can’t be forced but rather must be approached carefully, delicately. One must be willing to be “led […] astray” by the wonders of the mind.
16
Q
The nosegay
A
Toward the end of the poem, the speaker gathers up a bunch of flowers from this dream-garden to create a small bouquet called a “nosegay.” Reading the poem as an exploration of imagination, creativity, and the role of the artist, this nosegay symbolizes art itself. The speaker takes care to arrange the flowers in this bouquet so that they mimic their arrangement in the garden. It’s clear that the speaker wants to preserve the garden—to hold the “children of the hours” in hand. Imaginary images are delicate and fleeting, and art is a way to hang on to them. It’s also a way to share one’s imagination with the rest of the world—something the speaker nods to in the poem’s final line, wondering “to whom” to give this bouquet.
17
Q
Form
A
- “The Question” is made up of 40 lines of iambic pentameter. These are arranged into five octaves (eight-line stanzas), each with a steady rhyme scheme (ABABABCC).
- Packing such relatively long lines (iamb pentameter lines contain 10 syllables) into long stanzas makes the poem appear dense on the page, in turn evoking the very lushness that the speaker describes. This is a poem about the abundance and fertility of the imagination, so it makes sense that the poem simply looks as full-to-bursting as the speaker feels.
- At the same time, the fact that the text is broken up into neat blocks, each with predictable rhythms and music, echoes the speaker’s instinct to arrange the images from this imaginary garden into a bouquet that can be taken back into the real world. The imagination is rich, powerful, and endless, but the poem’s structure—with its steady stanza lengths, meter, and rhyme—subtly reflects the idea that it’s the poet’s job to give form to all this bounty.
18
Q
Meter
A
- “The Question” is written in iambic pentameter, meaning its lines contain five iambs
- There are some variations here and there, which are common in metered poetry and keep things from feeling too stiff or rigid. For example, it’s possible to scan the first foot of line 2—”Bare Win-“—as a spondee: two stressed syllables in a row, which emphasize the total barrenness of the scene before this garden sprang to life. Little moments like this don’t detract from the overall impact of iambic pentameter, however, which has a few effects in the poem.
- For one thing, it creates a gentle, predictable bounce that suits the speaker’s meditative tone. There are no jarring surprises here, just as there are no frightening creatures leaping out from this imaginary garden. Instead, the use of familiar iambs (which mimic the sound of regular English speech) feels inviting, and the poem’s steady music conveys the speaker’s calm delight while wandering through this dream-garden.
- The clear meter also echoes the speaker’s desire to hold “these imprisoned children of the Hours” (that is, the fleeting beauties of this dreamy garden) in “hand.” Meter imposes a kind structure, a clear order, on the scene, turning the garden’s lush beauty into something more manageable and preserving it in musical time. It arranges the poem’s language and images just as the speaker arranges those “visionary flowers” into a bouquet that can then be shared with someone else.
19
Q
Speaker
A
As such, the speaker isn’t really meant to be read as a specific, individual person; their age, gender, and life story aren’t important to the poem. What is important is the way the speaker opens themselves up to the creative process, allowing the imagination to guide them where it will and being receptive to the seemingly endless possibilities the garden presents. Indeed, the speaker readily lets themselves be “led […] astray”—off the beaten path—by the wonders of this landscape.
20
Q
Literary context
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- Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Question” first appeared in Leigh Hunt’s Literary Pocket-Book series in 1822, the same year as Shelley’s tragic death by drowning at the age of 29. The collection also featured work by Hunt, John Keats, and Bryan Waller Procter and was met with much enthusiasm at the time, garnering new readers for both Shelley and Keats (though Keats later remarked that the series was “full of the most sickening stuff you can imagine”).
- Shelley was an important poet in a movement known as Romanticism, which began as a reaction to the intellectual and poetic trends that dominated in the 1700s. Shelley’s work, like a lot of Romantic poetry, was concerned with deep feeling, the power of the natural world, and a desire for political and personal freedom. Where earlier Enlightenment-era writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift aspired to elegant phrasings and satirical wit, Shelley and many of his contemporaries preferred to write passionate verse that valued the mysteries of the imagination over crisp rationality.
21
Q
Historical context
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- Shelley wrote during the Romantic era, the transition to which occurred alongside a string of cultural, economic, and political upheavals across Europe. While the earlier Age of Enlightenment championed logic and reason above all else, the Romantic era saw an increased focus on mystery, doubt, and speculation, as well as the elevation of individual expression, subjectivity, and imagination.
- Romanticism was also a response to the rapid changes in society brought on by the Industrial Revolution, wherein new manufacturing processes—including increased mechanization of work and the use of steam power—led to vast economic and social changes. The rise of factories also led to larger urban populations, and with increasingly overcrowded cities came widespread housing, health, and sanitation issues. The Romantics found solace in the wonder and beauty of the natural world, an appreciation of which is clear in “The Question.”
- Like many Romantic poets, Shelley believed that beauty and goodness were intrinsically linked and that beautiful, well-crafted art therefore had the ability to create a better, more ethical society. His “Question,” then, isn’t just one of whom will care about the work he personally creates, but rather a reminder that poets aren’t just writing for their own pleasure—they have a moral responsibility to connect to audiences who might be influenced and molded by their work.
