Romantic Poets

"Dante is eminently the poet of beatitude. He has not only no rival, but none second to him. But if we were asked to name the poet who most nearly deserved this inaccessible proxime accessit, I should name Shelley. Indeed, my claim for Shelley might be represented by the proposition that Shelley and Milton are, each, the half of Dante."

"Shelley’s poetry represents a variety of kinds, most of them traditional. ... In all these kinds Shelley produces works which, though not perfect, are in one way more satisfactory than any of Dryden’s longer pieces: that is to say, they display a harmony between the poet’s real and professed intention, they answer the demands of their forms, and they have unity of spirit. Shelley is at home in his best poems, his clothes, so to speak, fit him, as Dryden’s do not. The faults are faults of execution, such as over-elaboration, occasional verbosity, and the like: mere stains on the surface."

"Shelley was not gifted for drama or narrative. Having said this, I realize that I had forgotten the conventional standing of The Cenci; but controversy may be postponed: it is at any rate universally agreed that (to shift tactfully to positive terms) Shelley's genius was "essentially lyrical"."

"Shelley's...ability to communicate a fluid, dynamic vision in different literary forms is abundantly evident in his writings in Italy (1818-22), where he produced some of the finest poetry of the Romantic period"

"Shelley I saw once. His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with, ten thousand times worse than the Laureat's, who voice is the worst part about him, except his Laureatship."

"All literature, all art, best seller or worst, must be sincere, if it is to be successful...Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers; and only someone with a mind like Shelley's can write Prometheus Unbound. The delicate forger has little chance with his contemporaries and none at all with posterity."

"He rose early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine) conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open), again walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedies, or the Bible, in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring interest."

"The author of the Prometheus Unbound...has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is sanguine-complexioned, and shrill-voiced. As is often observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but slides from it like a river."

"In a few minutes Shelley opened the conversation by saying in the most feminine and gentle voice, "As to that detestable religion, the Christian——" I looked astounded, but casting a glance round the table easily saw by ——'s expression of ecstasy and the women's simper, I was to be set at that evening vi et armis. No reply, however, was made to this sally during dinner, but when the dessert came and the servant was gone to it we went like fiends. —— and —— were deists. I felt exactly like a stag at bay and resolved to gore without mercy. Shelley said the Mosaic and Christian dispensations were inconsistent. I swore they were not, and that the Ten Commandments had been the foundation of all the codes of law in the earth. Shelley denied it."

"Now if we want poets to interpret physical science as Milton and Shelley did (Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up-to-date in their chemical knowledge), we must see that our possible poets are instructed, as their masters were, in science and economics."

"Emotional sorrow has inspired many sublime lyrics, much profound insight and poetic exultation of a Byron, Shelley, Heine, and their kind."

"At last, at the age of 17 I came across Shelley, whom no one had ever told me about. He remained for many years the man I loved most among the great men of the past."

"The torch which was lighted by Mary Wollstonecraft was never afterwards extinguished; there are glimpses of its light in the poems of her son-in-law Shelley. The frequent references to the principle of equality between men and women in the Revolt of Islam will occur to every reader."

"The ideas of Shelley seem to me always to be ideas of adolescence—as there is every reason why they should be. And an enthusiasm for Shelley seems to me also to be an affair of adolescence: for most of us, Shelley has marked an intense period before maturity, but for how many does Shelley remain the companion of age? I confess that I never open the volume of his poems simply because I want to read poetry, but only with some special reason for reference. I find his ideas repellent; and the difficulty of separating Shelley from his ideas and beliefs is still greater than with Wordsworth. And the biographical interest which Shelley has always excited makes it difficult to read the poetry without remembering the man: and the man was humourless, pedantic, self-centred, and sometimes almost a blackguard."

"Poor soul, he has always seemed to me an extremely weak creature, and lamentable much more than admirable. Weak in genius, weak in character (for these two always go together); a poor thin, spasmodic, hectic, shrill and pallid being; -- one of those unfortunates, of whom I often speak, to whom the 'talent of silence', first of all, has been denied. The speech of such is never good for much. Poor Shelley, there is something void and Hades-like in the whole inner-world of him; his universe is all vacant azure, hung with a few frosty mournful if beautiful stars; the very voice of him (his style &c), shrill, shrieky, to my ear has too much of the ghost!"

"Shelley, who in Prometheus Unbound had observed that the wise lack love and those who have love lack wisdom, went to his end in The Triumph of Life asking why good and the means of good were irreconcilable."

"Lucretius and his tradition taught Shelley that freedom came from understanding causation."

"Shelley is a unique poet, one of the most original in the language, and he is in many ways the poet proper, as much so as any in the language. His poetry is autonomous, finely wrought, in the highest degree imaginative, and has the spiritual form of vision stripped of all veils and ideological coverings, the vision many readers justly seek in poetry, despite the admonitions of a multitude of churchwardenly critics."

"After dinner Mr. Mill read us Shelley's Ode to Liberty & he got quite excited & moved over it rocking backwards & forwards & nearly choking with emotion; he said himself: “it is almost too much for one.”"

"The other people that I was simply made for were the Romantic poets. Shelley, in particular, and Keats."

"poetry, as Percy Shelley observed, is like a great river into which thousands of tributaries flow."

"The more we study, we the more discover / Our ignorance."

"Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim."

"Then, what is Life?"

"... why God made irreconcilable Good and the means of good."

"... they who wore Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, Signs of thought's empire over thought —their lore Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might Could not repress the mystery within."

"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."

"Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs — To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind."

"And like a prophetess of May Strewed flowers upon the barren way, Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear."

"Best and brightest, come away!"

"Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

"The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward everlasting fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia carent vate sacro [because they lack a sacred bard]. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men."

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician."

"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."

"Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain."

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."

"Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age."

"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted."

"The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."

"Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things."

"I love Love — though he has wings, And like light can flee, But above all other things, Spirit, I love thee — Thou art love and life! Oh come, Make once more my heart thy home."

"I love tranquil solitude, And such society As is quiet, wise, and good; Between thee and me What difference? but thou dost possess The things I seek, not love them less."

"Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay."

"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."

"The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."

"The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments."

"He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely."

"He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird."

"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."

"He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain."