254 quotes
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.
To a Skylark (1821)
In an ocean of dreams without a sound.
. . . How stern
And desolate a tract is this wide world!
How withered all the buds of natural good!
No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms
Of pitiless power!
Queen Mab (1813)
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;
Radiance and odour are not its dower;
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
It desires what it has not, the beautiful.
The Sensitive Plant (1820)
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
Yet in its depth what treasures!
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.
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.
Adonais (1821)
Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,
Without a hope, a passion or a love,
Who through a life of luxury and lies
Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,
Support the system whence their honors flow.
Queen Mab (1813)
‘Since tyrants by the sale of human life
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,
Success has sanctioned to a credulous world
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.
The Fairy in Queen Mab (1813)
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?
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats, tho' unseen, amongst us.
...extending through all space, and compelling to their proper orbits, the planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.
…feathery curtains,
Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch.
Queen Mab (1813)
* O wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
…fertile golden islands,
Floating on a silver sea.
Queen Mab (1813)
The old laws of England — they
Whose reverend heads with age are gray,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo — Liberty!
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number —
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)
I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.
Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou (1821)
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.
Tacitus says, that the Jews held God to be something eternal and supreme, neither subject to change nor to decay; therefore, they permit no statues in their cities or their temples. The universal Being can only be described or defined by negatives which deny his subjection to the laws of all inferior existences. Where indefiniteness ends, idolatry and anthropomorphism begin.
Essay on Christianity (1859)