Shelly imagines that the cloud is a person, the ‘I’ who speaks and describes itself. The first stanza tells us about its activity; the last stanza deals with the growth and disappearance of clouds, while here ‘I’ really stands for moisture-water in all its forms, on earth and in the sky.
The cloud says that it brings fresh showers of rain for thirsty plants and flowers from the oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and streams; water evaporates from these to form clouds, and then fall as rain. When the sun gets too hot in the afternoon and the plants are at the mercy of the scorching heat of the sun, the rain bears a light shade for the leaves and relieves them of the uneasiness. When the wings of the clouds are shaken, it wakes up the idle dews on the leaves of plants and enlightened their flowering buds. The flora are cooed to rest on the motherly earth; as the earth is the mother of all living things; as she moves around the sun. Shelly is talking of the earth as a planet. The ‘flail’ is an instrument used for beating wheat, to separate the grain from the husk. The hail strikes the earth hard, like a flail hitting the wheat. Hail consists of little balls of ice, so when it lies on the ground, it makes the green plains look white. Then the hail melts into water again, evaporates into the air to form clouds of rain, and ultimately pours down joyfully as stormy rain along with thunder and lighting.
