Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, — And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?"

"Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life."

"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."

"You would not easily guess All the modes of distress Which torture the tenants of earth; And the various evils, Which like so many devils, Attend the poor souls from their birth."

"Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil The shadows that float o'er Eternity's vale; Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love, That will hail their blest advent to regions above. For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway, And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray."

"Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing?"

"Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove, Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother's hate, Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love: He bears a load which nothing can remove, A killing, withering weight."

"Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven, Although on earth ’tis planted, Where its honours blow, While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven Which die the while they glow."

"Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can blast the flower, Even when in most unwary hour It blooms in Fancy's bower. Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can rend the shrine In which its vermeil splendours shine."

"Here I swear, and as I break my oath may Infinity Eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon, to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again — I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry."

"I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity."

"Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose, With care his sweet person adorning, He put on his Sunday clothes."

"I am willing to admit that some few axioms of morality, which Christianity has borrowed from the philosophers of Greece and India, dictate, in an unconnected state, rules of conduct worthy of regard; but the purest and most elevated lessons of morality must remain nugatory, the most probable inducements to virtue must fail of their effect, so long as the slightest weight is attached to that dogma which is the vital essence of revealed religion."

"The butchering of harmless animals cannot fail to produce much of that spirit of insane and hideous exultation in which news of a victory is related altho' purchased by the massacre of a hundred thousand men. If the use of animal food be in consequence, subversive to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the injustice and barbarity which is exercised toward these miserable victims. They are called into existence by human artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated, their social feelings outraged. It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery."

"Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day, Night followed, clad with stars."

"The lone couch of his everlasting sleep."

"Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live."

"We rest. — A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise. — One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: It is the same! — For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free: Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability."

"Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony."

"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."

"Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets' food is love and fame."

"Fame is love disguised."

"Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low?"

"The seed ye sow another reaps; The wealth ye find another keeps; The robes ye weave another wears; The arms ye forge another bears."

"Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle — Why not I with thine?"

"The sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me?"

"I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright."

"O lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast: O press it to thine own again, Where it will break at last!"

"Hell is a city much like London — A populous and smoky city."

"Teas, Where small talk dies in agonies."

"Peter was dull; he was at first Dull,—oh so dull, so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed, Still with this dulness was he cursed! Dull,—beyond all conception, dull."

"I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight."

"Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite; Let us remain together still, Then it will be good night."

"The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it."

"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."

"A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty."

"First our pleasures die — and then Our hopes, and then our fears — and when These are dead, the debt is due, Dust claims dust — and we die too."

"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."

"Have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him?"

"His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it."

"Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast; Custards for supper, and an endless host Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, And other such ladylike luxuries."

"A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light. And closed them beneath the kisses of Night."

"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!"

"Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory — Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved's bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on."

"One word is too often profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it."

"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."

"Swiftly walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, — Swift be thy flight!"

"Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon — Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night — Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!"

"There is no sport in hate where all the rage Is on one side."

"Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, Two scorpions under one wet stone, Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, Two crows perched on the murrained cattle, Two vipers tangled into one."