<P> In "The Cloud", Shelley relies on the imagery of transformation or metamorphosis, a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth: "I change, but I cannot die ." Mutability or change is a fact of physical nature . </P> <P> Lightning or electricity is the "pilot" or guide for the cloud . Lightning is attracted to the "genii" in the earth which results in lightning flashes . The genii symbolize the positive charge of the surface of the earth while the cloud possesses a negative charge . </P> <P> British scientist and poet Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, had written about plant life and science in the poem collection The Botanic Garden (1791) and on "spontaneous vitality", that "microscopic animals are said to remain dead for many days or weeks...and quickly to recover life and motion" when water and heat are added, in The Temple of Nature (1803). Percy Bysshe Shelley had cited Darwin in his Preface to the anonymously published novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), explaining how the novel was written and its meaning . He argued that imparting life to a corpse "as not of impossible occurrence". </P> <P> The cloud is a personification and a metaphor for the perpetual cycle of transformation and change in nature . All life and matter are interconnected and undergo unending change and metamorphosis . </P>

Summary of the poem the cloud written by pb shelley