The reaction which had followed the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, sent a wave of absolutism and repression all over Europe, Italy returned under the heel of Austria; the Bourbons were restored in France; in England came the days of Castlereagh and Peterloo.

The poetry of Shelley is the expression of what the children of the revolution--men and women who were brought up in and believed the revolutionary gospel--thought about these things.
But it is more than that.

Of no poet in English, nor perhaps in any other tongue, could it be said with more surety, that the pursuit of the spirit of beauty dominates all his work.

For Shelley it interfused all nature and to possess it was the goal of all endeavour.

The visible world and the world of thought mingle themselves inextricably in his contemplation of it.