Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth on which ye tread, All that must eternal be Witness the solemnity.
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Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
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Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth!
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The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought.
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Rough wind, the moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, - Wail, for the world's wrong!
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Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
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Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.
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… why God made irreconcilable Good and the means of good.
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My father Time is weak and gray With waiting for a better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands!
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He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now - Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.
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Me - who am as a nerve o'er which do creep The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth, When all beside was cold: - that thou on me Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony!
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Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
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Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
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Sun-girt City, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.
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Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good. I am a God and cannot find it there, Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge, This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
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He lives, he wakes - 'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais. - Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone.
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The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
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The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
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There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
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An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, - Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, - mud from a muddy spring, - Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
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Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets' food is love and fame.
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Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless Art thou - let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness.
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When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead - When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow's glory is shed. When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.
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Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low?