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Percy Bysshe Shelley on New Year

1792–1822 England

← All quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

13 quotes

Worse than despair,
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope.

The Cenci (1819)

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)

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.

To hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.

Nought may endure but Mutability.

Mutability (1816)

But hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth
Are children of one mother, even Love.

Through the sunset of hope,
Like the shapes of a dream,
What paradise islands of glory gleam!

The flood of time is rolling on;
We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone
To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream.
Have ye done well?

The past Hours weak and gray
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.

Prometheus Unbound (1820)

Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change.

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow.

Adonais (1821)

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.

Attribution

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