Cazamian detects: “Shelley’s lyricism is incomparable. In no other, do we find the perfect sureness, the triumphant rapidity of this upward flight, this soaring height, the super terrestrial quality as well as poignant intensity of the sounds which fall from these aerial regions. Truly, never was the soul of a poet so spontaneously lyrical”.

Shelley lyrics reflect upon the highest achievement of romantic poetry. The beauty and charm of his lyric have hardly been surpassed by any English poet. “Ode to the Westwind”, “To a Skylark”, “To Night” and a number of other lyrics of Shelley are the treasure of English literature.

Shelley was highly sensitive and imaginative, especially responsive to lyrical impulses. His poetic genius was lyrical. Milton, Wordsworth, Keats were lyrical too, but Shelley’s lyrical faculty was paramount. His lyrics are personal as well as impersonal. He deals with love, nature, future life, regeneration of mankind, etc. His technique is lively and fresh and he revels in it. The perfection lies in the fusion of imagery and rhythm in a diction.

Spontaneity is one of the remarkable features of Shelley’s lyrical poetry. His lyrics seem to have been written without the least effort, arising directly from his heart. To Morgan, his lyrics burst from the nature, the sunshine, the air. Nothing can be more spontaneous than the following lines, addressed to Skylark.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poets were, thou scorner of ground!

In “Adonais”, he calls himself ‘a dying lamp’, ‘a falling shower’, ‘a breaking billow’ which indicates the spontaneity of feelings.
There is a great intensity of feelings in Shelley’s lyrics. Emotions, with him, exceed the normal taints. Normally, he reaches the stage of emotional ecstasy.

A note of sadness runs through most of his lyrics. His best lyrics are cries of pain and anguish. He appears to be crying like ‘a tired child’, weeping away his life. ‘Our sweetest songs’, to him, ‘are those that tell of saddest thought’.

Sometimes, he is just melancholic. He discloses his hidden miseries, distractions, sufferings, tortures in a very painful manner.

Despair is one of the keynotes of his lyrical poetry. He is always longing and craving for the impossible. There is little peace in his lyrics. ‘To Night’ reflects his crave and longing and sigh for the night. This longing can also be found in the ‘Song’, in which he calls it the ‘Spirit of Delight’.

Shelley’s lyrics are absolutely simple, smooth and fluent. This note of simplicity adds to their beauty. How simple he is in the following lines, taken from “Ode to the Westwind”:

“The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Shelley’s lyrics are surpassingly musical and sweet. Granted that his lyrics are cries of pain, but these cries are beautifully transformed into loveliness by sweet music. Even his most pessimistic lyrics produce a sense of delight. It is the sadness of these lyrics which makes them melodious. ‘To Night’, ‘Ode to the Westwind’, etc. are masterpieces of musical lyricism.

Many of Shelley’s lyrics are ethereal and abstract. They seem to have been attempted by an inhabitant of the aerial regions. ‘The Cloud’ and ‘Ode to the Westwind’ particularly illustrate this ethereal temper. In ‘Ode to the Westwind’, he compares ‘loose clouds’ to ‘earth’s decaying leaves’, ‘shook from the boughs of Heaven and Ocean’. It is this kind of poetry which justifies the criticism of Shelley as “an ineffectual angel, beating in the void on luminous wings in vain”.

Shelley’s lyrics are highly embellished compositions. They abound in ornamental imagery. ‘The Cloud’, and ‘To a Skylark’ are the most striking examples. He paints a beautiful picture of the moon, calling it a ‘silver sphere’, its rays ‘beam arrows’ and its light, ‘intense lamp’.

We find wonderful similes decorating his lyrical poetry. He compares the skylark to a ‘poet hidden in the light of thought’ and moon to an ‘orbed maiden with white fire laden’.

Shelley’s lyrical poetry has a prophetic note soaked with humanism. In ‘Ode to the Westwind’ he gives a memorable message of hope to humanity; ‘If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Though some critics accuse Shelley of ineffectuality due to his ethereality and abstractness, yet most of the critics are all praise for him on account of his lyricism. Saintbury ranks Shelley as ‘one of the two or three major lyrical poets in the English tradition’. ‘There is no poet’, observes Morgan, ‘not even Shakespeare in his lyrics, who has Shelley’s effect of bird-song pouring and pouring out’.

Shelley’s more sentimental lyrics are not much appreciated today and perhaps he himself didn’t like them, for none of them was published in his life time. This flaw mars few of his poems. In majority of poems, he is unsentimental and reasonably careful; rather he combines passion with intellect.

Shelley was a remarkable lyrical poet. ‘The Cloud’, ‘To a Skylark’, and ‘Ode to the Westwind’ as lyrical poems are still ‘unsurpassed and almost unchallenged – the supreme lyrics – of the sky’.