The Cloud (poem)

The work was published in the 1820 collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts, With Other Poems by Charles and James Ollier in London in August 1820.

In "The Cloud", Shelley relies on the imagery of transformation or metamorphosis, a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth: "I change, but I cannot die."

British scientist and poet Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, had written about plant life and science in the poem collection The Botanic Garden (1791) and on "spontaneous vitality", that "microscopic animals are said to remain dead for many days or weeks ... and quickly to recover life and motion" when water and heat are added, in The Temple of Nature (1803).

[2] Percy Bysshe Shelley had cited Darwin in his Preface to the anonymously published novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), explaining how the novel was written and its meaning.

A review of the 1820 Prometheus Unbound collection in the September and October 1821 issues of The London Magazine noted the originality of "The Cloud": "It is impossible to peruse them without admiring the peculiar property of the author's mind, which can doff in an instant the cumbersome garments of metaphysical speculations, and throw itself naked as it were into the arms of nature and humanity.

The beautiful and singularly original poem of 'The Cloud' will evince proofs of our opinion, and show the extreme force and freshness with which the writer can impregnate his poetry.