Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelleywas one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric, as well as epic, poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 August 1792
love powerful community
Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves.
love men want
So soon as this want or power [of love] is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.
moon heaven noon
The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set; While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, The cross leads generations on.
wise wisdom want
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom.
dream rain ocean
Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
life views facts
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.
gold virtue scorn
Gold is a living god and rules in scorn, All earthly things but virtue.
flattery flattering incapable
The encomium of one incapable of flattery is indeed flattering.
atoms cold moments
The intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
work heart suffering
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.
children believe water
Know ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief.
wise spring flower
It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.
leadership society reign
To be omnipotent but friendless is to reign.
marriage choices vices
Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice.