Percy Bysshe Shelley in Representative

Percy Bysshe Shelley

In Representative Poetry Online (2006), Percy Bysshe Shelley emphasized the importance and function of poetry in our lives. It is noted that in a Defence of Poetry, he claimed that poetry is not only a form of artistic expression, medium of language, or an activity of leisure and amusement. He explains how poetry not only shows what is beautiful, but more importantly what is true.

Shelley also elevated Poetry as a medium that has its own utilitarian functions; particularly those that pertain to vital institutions in society that instigate change. Some of these institutions are in the areas of education, law-making, governance, and even religion. For example, the relationship of religion and poetry, specifically poems during the Romantic literature is reflected in two of Mark Blake's poems: The Little Black Boy and The Chimney Sweeper, taken from the website of Quotations.About (2006).

The Little Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O! my soul is white;

White as an angel is the English child:

But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree

And sitting down before the heat of day,

She took me on her lap and kissed me,

And pointing to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live

And gives his light, and gives his heat away.

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.

And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love,

And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face

Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear

The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.

Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,

And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus did my mother say and kissed me,

And thus I say to little English boy;

When I from black and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear,

To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him and he will then love me.

The Chimney Sweeper little black thing in the snow,

Crying "weep! weep!" In notes of woe!

Where are thy father and mother? Say!"

They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smiled among the winter's snow,

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

And because I am happy and dance and sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God and his priest and king, Who make up a heaven of our misery."

In these two poems, Mark Blake was allegorically relating the importance of God and religion in our lives. In The Little Black Boy, he gives an optimistic perception of God. The poem having the persona of an African child who questions his color and identity learns from his mother that God does not base his love on the color of one's skin. His mother also teaches him that the lives we have here on earth are temporary and but mere preparations of the rewards we will receive. Therefore, our appearance here on earth will not matter in heaven. What will be relevant as we meet God face-to-face is the endurance above sufferings that we experienced here on earth.