Thinking of Shelley

I have a great deal of ambivalence concerning the work of Percy Shelley largely because of the treatment of the women in his life, but I also value many of the arguments he puts forward in politics, morality, and literary theory. Today, I spent some time discussing his poetry with students, and the two poems that stood out to me were "Mutability" and "Men of England."  The first poem discusses the contingent nature of humans, and the second expresses his desire that workers should rise up and take the products of their labor.  Taken together, they express large parts of his philosophy, his dismissal of traditional divinity, his changeable ideas of love, and his desire to change the political and moral systems of his day.