Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

1792–1822 England

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English romantic poets, widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets in the English language; husband of Mary Shelley.

England
Essayists
Novelists
Playwrights
Poets

Also known as: Percy Shelley, Shelley, Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Random Percy Bysshe Shelley quote

254 quotes

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

Adonais (1821)

Most musical of mourners, weep again!

Adonais (1821)

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.

To a Skylark (1821)

Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou are fled away.

Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou (1821)

Best and brightest, come away!

To Jane: The Invitation (1822)

Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven,
Although on earth ’tis planted,
Where its honours blow,
While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven
Which die the while they glow.

Untitled (1810)

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.

The Sensitive Plant (1820)

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.

To Jane: The Invitation (1822)

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.

Adonais (1821)

Spirit of [[Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

The Cloud (1820)

What! alive, and so bold, O earth?

The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

Hellas (1821)

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Ode to the West Wind (1819)

He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely.

Adonais (1821)

Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
All that can adorn and bless
Art thou — let deeds, not words, express
Thine exceeding loveliness.

The Masque of Anarchy (1819)

Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England — thou
Shield'st alike the high and low.

The Masque of Anarchy (1819)

I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.

Julian and Maddalo (1819)

If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.

On a Future State (1815)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Percy Bysshe Shelley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.