Research Paper on:
Comparative Analysis of 'Lamia' by John Keats and 'Triumph of Life' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
we are reading a poem about a mythological individual, or reading a poem about a man on a farm, poetry has a unique way of offering up examinations of life.  In Shelleys "Triumph of Life" and Keats "Lamia" we are presented with two very long poems that essentially depict perspectives on life. In the following paper we examine these two  poems individually and then present a comparison of the two. Shelley and "Triumph of Life" Many argue that Shelleys poem we are presented with a long poem that  ultimately comes to the conclusion that it is useless to try to create definitive ideas which can illustrate what life is all about. It is a poem that many argue  illustrates how useless words and language is in trying to come to some deeply hidden truth concerning life, and that in the end we must simple accept that life conquers  everything and there is no way an individual can rise above the highly unpredictable nature of life. One author notes that "ambivalence reaches its height in Shelleys bleakest poem,  ironically titled The Triumph of Life. Unfinished, Triumph refers not to mans victory over life but rather the opposite: lifes relentless conquest over man" (Padgett). In essence, we find that  "the poem asserts that the only resolution in the modern world is irresolution. Hence, The Triumph of Life becomes a latter-day attempt to revise the Dantesque vision into an apt  model of the contemporary world" (Padgett). We see a joy and hope in the beginning of the poem as the narrator comes upon some wondrously enlightening thought: "And then  a Vision on my brain was rolled./ As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay/ This was the tenour of my waking dream" (Shelley 40-42). The narrator begins to