Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
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The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.
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He died, Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old, and lonely.
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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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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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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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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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Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless Art thou - let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness.
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Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night-wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
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Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
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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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The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
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There is no God! This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.
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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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Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day 'Tis since thou are fled away.
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Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low?
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I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; - Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. - You with the unpaid bill, Despair, - You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, - I will pay you in the grave, - Death will listen to your stave.
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Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
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What is Freedom? - ye can tell That which slavery is, too well - For its very name has grown To an echo of your own.
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O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?