Shelley’s poems have a great lyrical quality about them, and it is because of this quality that they are remembered and valued today. Odes such as “The West Wind” and “Dejection” are his lyrical masterpieces.His other famous lyrics are “The Cloud” and “Ode to Skylark”. Shelley felt that there was a united spirit running through all the objects and phenomena of nature. In poems like “The Cloud”, he does what he undoubtly did very well, that is, mix science with art, matter with spirit, humankind with nature and divinity, and knowledge with inspiration.
“The Cloud” is a lyric of the sky. The principal sources of the lyricism of this poem are the literary devices that the poet uses in order to create word music: internal and regular rhyming, assonance, alliteration and elision.For example, showers and flowers, shade and laid, under and thunder,etc.
The poem contains a great quantity of imagery, viz. the sanguine sunrise with its meteor eyes and outspread, burning plumes; the image of an eagle sitting on a mountain crag with its golden wings spread out in a regal manner.
Another notable point in his poems is his myth-making quality.
Shelley thought that the objects of nature possessed a distinct life and individuality of their own. For him the forces of nature possessed a distinct life and personalityof their own. For him the forces of nature were as distinguishable from one another as one human being is from another. This ability for individually personifying the forces of nature has been called Shelley’s myth-making power as a poet, that is, his mythopoeic power. The poet principally uses the literary device called personification.
The most remarkable quality of this poem is its treatment of natural reality. While each of the activities of the cloud is described with factual exactness, the poet personifies the cloud, that is, the cloud behaves like a human being.
The reader of this poem cannot say that they did not like the poem. It is truly beautiful and full of rhyming words.