1
The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?Percy Bysshe Shelley
2
Soul meets soul on lovers lips.Percy Bysshe Shelley
3
Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.Percy Bysshe Shelley
4
In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.Percy Bysshe Shelley
5
God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.Percy Bysshe Shelley
6
God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate.Percy Bysshe Shelley
7
The being called God...bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar.Percy Bysshe Shelley
8
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?Percy Bysshe Shelley
9
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.Percy Bysshe Shelley
10
No more let life divide what death can join together.Percy Bysshe Shelley
11
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.Percy Bysshe Shelley
12
O weep for Adonis - He is dead." "Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep - he hath wakened from the dream of lifePercy Bysshe Shelley
13
I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.Percy Bysshe Shelley
14
Ozymandias"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 shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked 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. .Percy Bysshe Shelley
15
I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Has led me- who knows how? To thy chamber-window, Sweet!Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distortedPercy Bysshe Shelley
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When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.Percy Bysshe Shelley
19
The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever, With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one another's being mingle:– Why not I with thine? See! the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea:– What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me? .Percy Bysshe Shelley
20
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last!Percy Bysshe Shelley
21
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.Percy Bysshe Shelley
22
I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity.Percy Bysshe Shelley
23
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.Percy Bysshe Shelley
24
We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand'ring 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!Percy Bysshe Shelley
25
Yes! all is past–swift time has fled away, Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind; How long will horror nerve this frame of clay? I'm dead, and lingers yet my soul behind. Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell, And yet that may not ever, ever be, Heaven will not smile upon the work of Hell;Ah! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me; Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.Percy Bysshe Shelley
26
Venice, it's temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.Percy Bysshe Shelley
27
There is eloquence in the tonguelesswind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of thereeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to somethingwithin the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathlessrapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, likethe enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one belovedsinging to you alone.Percy Bysshe Shelley
28
..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. While the touch of Nature’s art Harmonizes heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:– “I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;.. Awake! arise! And come away! To the wild woods and the plains, And the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun: Where the lawns and pastures be, And the sandhills of the sea:– Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers, and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal sun. .Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.Percy Bysshe Shelley
30
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.Percy Bysshe Shelley
31
Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.Percy Bysshe Shelley
32
And I have fitted up some chambers there Looking towards the golden Eastern air, And level with the living winds, which flow Like waves above the living waves below.– I have sent books and music there, and all Those instruments with which high spirits call The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, Folded within their own eternity.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:Percy Bysshe Shelley
34
Sonnet: Political GreatnessNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame; Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts, History is but the shadow of their shame, Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts As to oblivion their blind millions fleet, Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit By force or custom? Man who man would be, Must rule the empire of himself; in it Must be supreme, establishing his throne On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.Percy Bysshe Shelley
35
War is a kind of superstition, the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men.Percy Bysshe Shelley
36
You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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And in a mad trance Strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings We decay Like corpses in a charnel Fear & GriefConvulse is & consume us Day by day And cold hopes swarm Like worms within Our living clayPercy Bysshe Shelley
39
Joy, joy, joy! Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers, And the future is dark, and the present is spread, Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.Percy Bysshe Shelley
40
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 mincepies, And other such ladylike luxuries.Percy Bysshe Shelley
41
If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? .Percy Bysshe Shelley
42
A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.Percy Bysshe Shelley
43
Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.Percy Bysshe Shelley
44
Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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IF [GOD] HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?Percy Bysshe Shelley
46
At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart?Percy Bysshe Shelley
47
There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft. A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman....Percy Bysshe Shelley
48
Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass The hearts of others. .. And when I went among my kind, with triple brass Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!Percy Bysshe Shelley
49
I can give not what men call love; But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the heavens reject not: 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?Percy Bysshe Shelley
50
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.Percy Bysshe Shelley
51
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, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.Percy Bysshe Shelley
52
See the mountains kiss high HeavenAnd the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea -What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?Percy Bysshe Shelley
53
What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.Percy Bysshe Shelley
54
Confound the subtlety of lawyers with the subtlety of the law.Percy Bysshe Shelley
55
Sorrow (A Song)To me this world's a dreary blank, All hopes in life are gone and fled, My high strung energies are sank, And all my blissful hopes lie dead.-- The world once smiling to my view, Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy; The world I then but little knew, Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy; All then was jocund, all was gay, No thought beyond the present hour, I danced in pleasure’s fading ray, Fading alas! as drooping flower. Nor do the heedless in the throng, One thought beyond the morrow give, They court the feast, the dance, the song, Nor think how short their time to live. The heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace, What earthly comfort can console, It drags a dull and lengthened pace, ' Till friendly death its woes enroll.-- The sunken cheek, the humid eyes, E’en better than the tongue can tell; In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies, Where memory's rankling traces dwell.-- The rising tear, the stifled sigh, A mind but ill at ease display, Like blackening clouds in stormy sky, Where fiercely vivid lightnings play. Thus when souls' energy is dead, When sorrow dims each earthly view, When every fairy hope is fled, We bid ungrateful world adieu. .Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Equality in possessions must be the last result of the utmost refinements of civilization; it is one of the conditions of that system of society towards which, with whatever hope of ultimate success, it is our duty to tend.Percy Bysshe Shelley
57
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.Percy Bysshe Shelley
58
Before we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is necessary that we possess those advantages which we have been cheated of, and which the experience of modern times has proved that nations even under the present conditions are susceptible.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. .Percy Bysshe Shelley
60
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. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever Should come near.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys: Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches, and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanised automaton.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a Being beyond its limits capable of creating it.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair so an unsuccessful author turns critic.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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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.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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If winter comes can spring be far behind?Percy Bysshe Shelley
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History is: Fables agreed upon - Voltaire The biography of a few stout and earnest persons - Ralph Waldo Emerson A vast Mississippi of falsehood - Matthew Arnold A confused heap of facts - Lord Chesterfield A cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man -Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Reason respects the differences and imagination the similitudes of things.Percy Bysshe Shelley
70
Jealousy's eyes are green.Percy Bysshe Shelley
71
I have drunken deep of joy And I will taste no other wine tonight.Percy Bysshe Shelley
72
See! the mountains kiss high heaven And the waves clasp one another No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother And the sunlight clasps the earth And the moonbeams kiss the sea: - What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me?Percy Bysshe Shelley
73
Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.Percy Bysshe Shelley
74
Hail to thee blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert That from Heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.Percy Bysshe Shelley
75
January grey is here Like a sexton by her grave February bears the bier March with grief doth howl and rave And April weeps - but O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.Percy Bysshe Shelley
76
That orbed maiden with white fire laden Whom mortals call the moon.Percy Bysshe Shelley
77
How many a rustic Milton has passed by Stifling the speechless longings of his heart In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies no longer tameless then To mold a pin or fabricate a nail!Percy Bysshe Shelley
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I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.Percy Bysshe Shelley
79
Man who man would be must rule the empire of himself.Percy Bysshe Shelley
80
Fear not for the future weep not for the past.Percy Bysshe Shelley
81
If Winter comes can Spring be far behind?Percy Bysshe Shelley
82
How many a rustic Milton has passed by Stifling the speechless longings of his heart In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies no longer tameless then To mould a pin or fabricate a nail!Percy Bysshe Shelley
83
Familiar acts are beautiful through love.Percy Bysshe Shelley
84
O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?Percy Bysshe Shelley
85
Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.Percy Bysshe Shelley
86
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.Percy Bysshe Shelley
87
Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.Percy Bysshe Shelley
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In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.Percy Bysshe Shelley
89
Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.Percy Bysshe Shelley
90
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.Percy Bysshe Shelley
91
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.Percy Bysshe Shelley
92
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.Percy Bysshe Shelley
93
The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.Percy Bysshe Shelley
94
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.Percy Bysshe Shelley
95
Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.Percy Bysshe Shelley
96
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.Percy Bysshe Shelley
97
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.Percy Bysshe Shelley
98
The soul's joy lies in doing.Percy Bysshe Shelley
99
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.Percy Bysshe Shelley
100
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.Percy Bysshe Shelley