254 quotes
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below?
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
Ode to the West Wind (1819)
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.
Adonais (1821)
Have you not heard
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him?
Letter to Maria Gisborne (1820)
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
A Defence of Poetry (1821)
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Adonais (1821)
You lie—under a mistake,
For this is the most civil sort of lie
That can be given to a man's face. I now
Say what I think.
Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
Good-Night (1819)
From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares.
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)
A thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
Prometheus Unbound (1820)
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.
Death (1820)
Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow in both cases, excludes us from all enquiry.
Queen Mab (1813)
And man ... no longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,
And horribly devours his mangled flesh.
Queen Mab (1813)
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!
Hellas (1821)
Come near me! I do weave
A chain I cannot break—I am possest
With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.
Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights
The fairest feelings of the opening heart,
Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil
Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,
And judgment cease to wage unnatural war
With passion's unsubduable array.
Queen Mab (1813)
Till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!
Adonais (1821)
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear.
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
Ode to the West Wind (1819)