Mont Blanc

Click on here to view the whole poem, Mont Blanc by Percy Shelley.

Reading this poem, Mont Blanc, you can clearly understand the connection Shelley has with the power of nature. Shelley suggests that the natural world holds a inspiring power over his imagination. In this case, the power comes from the mountain. When seeing the mountain, Shelley can feel that its influencing him. Which makes him see things differently either in a positive or negative view. One positive view from the power nature is the human joy, faith, goodness, and pleasures it gives you. But as for the negative side, you see destruction nature can create. For example in the poem, it talks about "glaciers creep like snakes that watch their prey, from their far mountains" and pine trees that symbolize the persistence of human values in the face of obstacles. To me this means that the pine trees are the prey; therefore the glaciers will come down to crush the trees as it creeps down. This right here then stands that we, the humans, are the pine trees and that glaciers are nature. It shows that the power of nature can pass us with its powerful force if we don't pay much attention to it. Shelley also talks about two sets of mind, the individual mind and the universal mind. The individual mind are our thoughts inside and the universal mind are the thoughts outside of our thoughts. With the individual mind we can create imagination; thus giving us power to describe nature differently from others. At same time, the universal mind being nature, can give us imagination too. Making the power of the mind and the power of nature equal. But when the poem ended like this "and what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, if to human minds imaginings silence and solitude were vacancy?" In other words this means if we didn't have silence and solitude it would be hard to create imagination. One reason way I thought of thought of this was because through out the whole poem, the activities in Mont Blanc were silence and solitude, that everything expressed was actually in our minds; therefore not having this would leave the world boring.

-Dulce Roque