Lyterary analysis of Wine of the fairies by Shelley

Wine Of The Fairies - Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am drunk with the honey wine
Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,
Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.
The bats, the dormice, and the moles
Sleep in the walls or under the sward 
Of the desolate castle yard;
And when ’tis spilt on the summer earth
Or its fumes arise among the dew,
Their jocund dreams are full of mirth,
They gibber their joy in sleep; for few 
Of the fairies bear those bowls so new! 

Narrative elements

SETTING: Romanticism, (18^th century) in the fairies’ castle. 

THEME: Why do we feel so happy when drinking?

PLOT: A man describing how much he loves wine from fairies.

CHARACTERS: The narrator and the fairies

POINT OF VIEW: The atmosphere evokes happiness, because the man is stoked with the wine flavor from the fairies.   

FIGURES: imagery and rhyme 

Wine of the fairies

With this poem, Shelley wants to show the fascination of a man for a drinking, in this case wine, it can be seen in the very first verse “I am drunk with the honey wine Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,” this was perhaps the first taste of this wine and he clearly fall in love with it because he began to feel really fine with it. This fascination goes until the point of asking why we feel so good when drinking, because as in the poem “Their jocund dreams are full of mirth, They gibber their joy in sleep;”, getting drunk could be for some people the best feeling while for others cannot be in that way.

This is a romantic poem of a man showing his fascination towards the fairies’ wine. Shelley decides to use imagery in order to show what the wine can do in some fields like dry land: “And when ’tis spilt on the summer earth Or its fumes arise among the dew,” this fume that shows the perfection of the drinking making him really happy. On the other hand, Shelley uses rhyme, in order to preserve the romantic style thanks to the sounds, in the first and second verse, both of them have the same sound in their last word, and he repeats the process in the whole poem, process that makes more romantic, more pleasant for the reader. When talking about characterization, the man who is drinking is a real lover of wine that enjoys too much this drinking, he shows that not all the time we fall in love with people but with food as well, and the fairies that look to be very clever for making a wine capable of charming men. This poem was written during the Romanticism era, in which people were freer to write as it is represented in this poem, talking about imaginary creatures as the fairies, besides, the man seems to be in a castle, perhaps with drunk men stoked as well because of the fairies wine.

There are too many effects that alcohol provokes in our bodies, and in this case, wine is not the exception, a man who is really fascinated for its flavor, for all this substance makes him feel that it makes him write romantic verses.

Personally, I think that drunken people become more honest, we can do whatever we want without worrying about it. However, it is necessary to be careful when drinking for avoiding problems with the rest of people.