39 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes on Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley quotes on poetry

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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

23. With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

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

31. Hell is a city much like London - A populous and smoky city.

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.

41. 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!

42. 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.

46. 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!

50. 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.

55. How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!

66. I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: - Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

78. The pale stars are gone! For the sun, their swift shepherd, To their folds them compelling, In the depths of the dawn, Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee Beyond his blue dwelling, As fawns flee the leopard.

88. Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

91. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might.

92. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Bai?'s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

96. As I lay asleep in Italy There came a voice from over the Sea, And with great power it forth led me To walk in the visions of Poesy.

98. All were fat; and well they might Be in admirable plight, For one by one, and two by two, He tossed them human hearts to chew.

107. Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless Art thou - let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness.

114. I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

115. I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.

119. Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

120. We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

121. Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then - as I am listening now.

129. Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage, Pourest such music, that it might assuage The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody.

136. I weep for Adonais - he is dead! O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

140. Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise! She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

151. 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.

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

157. 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.

159. 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.

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.

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

167. A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

168. 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.

169. 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.