Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem

This section describes the relationship between nature, virtue, and happiness. Being one with nature can inspire humans to ruminate on their place in the cosmos and develop an appreciation for the spirit that binds all life. In nature, the goodness of the world remains evident. However, due to civilization’s corrupting influence, humans are cursed to exist outside of this natural goodness. In response, they wage war and destruction, uprooting the purity of the natural state. The only good news is that this kind of disturbance is always short-lived, since rulers’ life spans are finite. Each time afterwards, nature restores the world to a more peaceful state, which could be permanent if people became more aware of how to live naturally.

Custom, habit, law, and tradition—the features of civilization that eventually bring about war and its accompanying miseries—have a particularly destructive influence on young people, defiling childhood innocence from birth: “force and falsehood hang even o’er the cradled babe” (Line 119). Children are exposed to and begin to imitate the evils of the world so quickly that their parents cannot shield them from these enemies of nature’s goodness. Again, though, Queen Mab stresses that none of the things that beset children are set in stone—there is always the potential for virtuous acts to redeem these evils, though people are often scared to face what it would really take to undo the social order: people “fear the cure, though hating the disease” (Line 4.165). Still, the poem urges destroying the false and unjust societal order for a more humane and natural society to be built.

Shelley’s radical politics continue here, as Queen Mab accuses kings and the state, and priests and organized religion of hypocrisy, identifying these institutions as the scourge of society because they promote jingoism and terror through their laws and moral codes. “Soul is the only element” (Line 4.140) that can overcome these conditions to provide a refuge for the innocent; if humans reject the spiritual side of life, their days become a living death.