The Serpent is shut out from Paradise
The serpent is shut out from Paradise.
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs
Fled in the April hour.
I too must seldom seek again
Near happy friends a mitigated pain.
The poem was an expression of Shelly’s love for Jane Williams.
His feelings for Jane, as Shelley suggests, are beyond love, perhaps even divine —“And the Heavens reject not” —, something that can be recognized by the heavens and thus take on a godlike character which is not suitable for such a “profane” environment like the Earth.
The poem reveals Shelley’s awareness of the impossibility of his relationship with Jane, an unfeasibility which is echoed in the verse “I can give not what men call love” and by the imagery that follows, for example, “The desire of the moth for the star/ (…) The devotion to something afar”.
These images illustrate the desire for impossible things, which could be interpreted as an analogy of his feelings for her which are meant to be kept in a utopian sphere.
The poem is one of eleven Percy wrote for Jane Williams.
The poem is one of eleven Percy wrote for Jane Williams.
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