Summary
In the first half of the poem, the cloud lists the various roles it plays in nature, like a worker making note of his daily tasks: it brings rain to flowers, shade to trees, dew to young buds, and causes strong weather like hail and snow. The cloud does not appear to put a great deal of effort or demand much attention as it goes about these day-to-day duties. In stanza two, the cloud calls lighting its pilot, describing how lightning acts as its guide and carries it to new places. Lightning's "Spirit" is constant, regardless of how often the cloud and the weather change. The cloud and the lightning move as a closely allied pair through the rest of nature, experiencing it together. By stanza three, the cloud carries the sunrise over land and the sunset over sea, finally ending the day as "still as a brooding dove." The cloud not only helps the sun in its daily roles, but clearly enjoys the excitement and beauty of the sun's actions.
Analysis
In the first stanza, Shelley establishes the cloud as an essential component of nature. Flowers rely on its rain and leaves depend on its shade, while young buds open from its morning dew. The cloud can also bring devastating weather like hail and snow, but it can just as easily wash away the damage with rain. The cloud does not demand attention while performing these tasks. Instead, it acts as a distant, helpful facilitator, ensuring that the other personified personalities of the natural world can smoothly relate to one another. The stanza's final line, "And I laugh as I pass with thunder," calls attention to the cloud's nuanced character, where its playful nature coincides with its potential to wield brute force upon the world below. The poem's anapestic meter, where two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable, propels each line forward with a strong rhythm, like thunder looming in the distance. However, that anapestic rhythm also creates a certain cyclical, rhythmic consistency—the thunder is not a disruption but an expected and essential part of the cloud's daily roles.
When Shelley introduces lighting as the cloud's "pilot" in stanza two, he develops the cloud's symbolism as a powerful agent of change and revolution. While thunder "struggles and howls," lighting is gentle and constant, guiding the cloud with its love for Spirit. Furthermore, lightning is literally an illuminating force, and just as it provides light for the earth below, it seems to provide a certain illuminating mental liberation for the cloud as it carries it to unexpected places. Throughout his body of work, Shelley is consistently interested in the power of nature, and "Spirit," similar to a god-like figure, corresponds to energy that underlies and unites the various elements of the natural world. The invocation of "spirit" hints that the poem's natural cycles, while they may not have an endpoint, do not lack a purpose—they serve to honor and follow the lead of a valuable, if mysterious, underlying spiritual force.
In stanza three, the cloud carries the sunrise on its back, bringing dawn to a new day. As the sun pleasantly passes through the sky, its beams touch the edge of a mountain and an eagle's wings. While it "breathes .../Its ardours of rest and love" even as day transitions to night, the cloud rests "as still as a brooding dove." Thus Shelley crafts a contrast between the cloud's ability to touch the bird, impacting it, and its ability to literally become a birth through metaphor. This, too, hints at what may be a political allegory: the cloud has the ability to shapeshift between different roles, at times subtly highlighting others and creating circumstances in which they thrive, and at times itself becoming a figurehead in and of itself. By turns gentle, aggressive, and guided by lightning's "love of Spirit," the cloud embodies the ideal of Shelley's revolutionary thinking.
Moreover, if we understand this poem to be at least in part an extended metaphor describing Shelley's revolutionary politics, with the cloud serving as an example of an ideal revolutionary, then it is useful to carefully examine the roles played by the other personified characters. Shelley makes clear that utopian, revolutionary societies, at least as he conceives of them, are collaborative and anti-authoritarian. Thus one of the most striking moments in this poem, particularly from the point of view of political analysis, is the early series of lines in which the cloud facilitates a parental relationship between the earth and flowers. "From my wings are shaken the dews that waken/The sweet buds every one,/When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,/As she dances about the sun." Here, the cloud's role is essential, but it is also entirely in the background. The earth, the buds, and the sun share a moment together, but the cloud is not included. Indeed, through the rhymes "one" and "sun," Shelley ties the lines latter three lines together, relegating the cloud's contribution to the first, unrhymed line. Yet the cloud is satisfied, knowing that it has been helpful and that it will serve a more dramatic role at an appropriate time. Shelley suggests, therefore, that a true revolutionary understands the value of unglamorous and even routine work. Moreover, by positioning the earth and the buds metaphorically as a mother and child, Shelley indicates that the realms of family, femininity, and domesticity are no less important (politically, spiritually, or socially) than traditionally masculine or public-facing ones.
