254 quotes
I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.
The word of God has fenced about all crimes with Holiness.
Queen Mab (1813)
Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
Adonais (1821)
Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed, — but it returneth!
Hellas (1821)
Words are but holy as the deeds they cover.
The Cenci (1819)
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.
Queen Mab (1813)
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.
The Cloud (1820)
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.
To a Skylark (1821)
Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.
Declaration of Rights (1812)
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
Queen Mab (1813)
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
The work of their own hearts, and this must be
Our chastisement or recompense.
Julian and Maddalo (1819)
To hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.
I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.
The Cenci (1819)
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.
One Word is Too Often Profaned (1821)
Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame.
An Exhortation (1819)
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
A Defence of Poetry (1821)
The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.
Song to the Men of England (1819)
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
Prometheus Unbound (1820)
Nought may endure but Mutability.
Mutability (1816)