17 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes on Beauty

Percy Bysshe Shelley quotes on beauty

5. 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.

16. The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us; visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening, Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Like memory of music fled, Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

17. Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?

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

38. 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.

48. When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead - When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow's glory is shed.

57. Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.

72. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see, what things they be; But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality!

79. Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

128. My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou entertain; Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring Thee to base company (as chance may do), Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight! tell them that they are dull, And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

138. Most musical of mourners, weep again!

139. To that high Capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.

147. A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift - A Love in desolation masked; - a Power Girt round with weakness; - it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow; - even whilst we speak Is it not broken? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

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

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

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

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