SOURCE: “Shelley's ‘A Vision of the Sea,’” in Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter, 1978, pp. 51-59.

In the following essay, Ketcham interprets Shelley's fragment “A Vision of the Sea” as the poet's most direct artistic statement on the theme of man versus nature.

From the time of the boyish wonderings that prompted his frustrated ghost-hunt at Warnham Church to the spectral events at Casa Magni in 1822, Shelley was probing, uneasily and persistently, at questions which stood ranged along the outer limits of his belief. Again and again he confronted, and fell short of finally resolving, a series of related problems—the scope of the individual will, the immortality of the soul, the extent of change which love can bring about, the relationship of man to his physical environment. Whether faith (or love, or will) can move mountains or look through death were issues which troubled him in the...