Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), one of the ‘Big Six’ Romantic poets, the others being Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron and Keats.

Romantic Poetry
A tenet of Romantic poetry is its focus on nature and man’s insignificance in comparison to the natural world. This was a subject of particular interest to the poet Wordsworth. Shelley, however, was concerned with regeneration of his spiritual and poetic self, and regeneration of Europe politically. It was a turbulent time when the Napoleonic Wars had not long ended and Europe was in a state of flux and unrest. In England the infamous Peterloo Massacre had occurred in August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd demonstrating against poor economic conditions and lack of parliamentary representation in the north of England.

The Poem
This poem (published in 1820), though witty and light-hearted, is also complex. It suggests that the poet should be free-spirited and anti-materialistic. The chameleon, a creature of Shelley’s imagination — he knows that they need more than ‘light and air’ to survive — changes naturally with its surroundings and may be duplicitous. While on the one hand Shelley advises against chameleon-like behaviour on the part of the poet, at the same time he seems to be playing the chameleon himself.

The tone of the poem is gently mocking, in contrast to his harsher mock-obituary of his sonnet To Wordsworth.

Themes The following themes are common to many of Shelley’s poems. It is worth comparing this to his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,

The heroic role of the poet — The poet has a deep, mystical appreciation for nature, and can translate truths about the cosmos into poetry that the public can understand. Thus, a poet has the ability to change the world for the better and to bring about political, social, and spiritual change. Ironically, this straining to link with humanity requires visionary power that is isolating. But ultimately the poet triumphs because his art is immortal, outlasting government, religion, and restrictive society rules and living on to inspire new generations.

The Poetic Imagination — This power seems to come from a mystical place and provides inspiration, the source of creativeness and originality, empowering the human mind.

The Power of Nature — Shelley was a Pantheist and believed that Nature or a divine spirit of beauty, runs through everything in the universe. This force can be the root of human joy and goodness and can influence people to change the world for the better, though he is also aware of its indiscriminately destructive side.

Structure
The poem comprises three nine-lined stanzas. The rhyme scheme is highly complex, but broadly the pattern is a quatrain followed by a rhyming triplet and then a rhyming couplet. The rhyming pattern is therefore ABABCCCDD. The third stanza varies slightly with the pattern ABABCDDCCC.

The metrical rhythm is broadly iambic tetrameter, that is four iambs, or metrical feet, per line comprising an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. Each stanza is finished with a gentle four or five-syllable line — not quite a iambic trimeter.

The effect is ‘light touch’, a gentle rhythm to express a deceptively playful subject.

Language
Here, Shelley abandons is most notable characteristic — his use of abstract words like ‘Love’, ‘Hope’, ‘Expectation’‘ and cosmic references like 'Day’, ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth’ etc. However, in this poem the references to ‘sea’, ‘earth’ and ‘moon’ are retained, though without capitals. The effect is still to emphasise the Romantic Ideal.