Shelley often uses nature to express the idea that in the social world as in the natural world, effects flow from causes, which in turn generate new causes. Shelley is concerned with the flux of nature, and tends to depict it in its states of flux and transition. This often results in impressionistic landscapes. Shelley recognized a distinction between the sublime, which would inspire awe or terror and so cause the poet to question the nature and existence of a spiritual presence, and the merely beautiful.
Life is depicted as a voyage over a dangerous sea.
The sunrise represents the burgeoning of hope. At sunset, gloominess returns, although the glimmer of Venus suggests a continuance of hope. The diffusion of the mist at one point in the poem strongly suggests the dissolution of political tyranny. Love over Man, Chastity over Love, Death over Chastity, Fame over Death, Time over Fame, and God over Time. Concerned with the potential of people to free themselves from external necessity as well as from their own uncontrolled passions, and so escape their present sad condition.