He is not dead, he doth not sleep - He hath awaken from the dream of life.

Percy Shelley directly addresses Wordsworth in this poem and ends the sonnet by saying “Thou leavest me to grieve, / Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.” My first interpretation of this poem, without any background knowledge, was that Shelley was mourning the death of Wordsworth. Shelley speaks about Wordsworth as if he no longer exists and he discusses the works of Wordsworth’s past. But Wordsworth outlived Shelley by a number of years.

Shelley happened to write this poem around the time that Wordsworth strayed from his original, radical philosophies and converted into a conservative, fundamentalist. During this time too, Wordsworth started to work for the government, almost completely abandoning his poetry. This most likely seemed very un-romantic and was considered shameful to Shelley because he wrote this poem which speaks of Wordsworth as if he no longer existed.  It’s almost as if Shelley suggests that Wordsworth was nothing without his poetry and that he was somewhat of a coward for abandoning his craft.

This entire poem is meant to defy Wordsworth and his career decisions which makes the structure particularly interesting to me. Wordsworth loved to write sonnets and he usually wrote sonnets in the traditional form: octave and sestet. Instead this poem is written with the sestet first and the octave last. Wordsworth’s poetry usually had an abbaabba rhyme scheme while this poem has an ababcdcd pattern (until we get closer to the last six lines where things get weird.)

Knowing the background information about this poem makes it pretty hilarious to me. It’s really funny that Shelley wrote a sonnet about Wordsworth’s life changes as if his changes made him lose his original identity, which lead to his death (or lack of existence.)