01c. 1807 ADPeace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awakened from the dream of life— ’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable life.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
02c. 1807 ADPrometheus. And thou, O Mother Earth! Earth. I hear, I feel Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down Even to the adamantine central gloom Along these marble nerves; ’tis life, ’tis joy, And, through my withered, old, and icy frame The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down Circling. Henceforth the many children fair Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants, And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged, And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes, Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom Draining the poison of despair, shall take And interchange sweet nutriment.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
03c. 1807 ADFrom my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast, As she dances about the sun.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
04c. 1807 ADSacred Goddess, Mother Earth Thou from whose immortal bosom Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue, Fairest children of the Hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
05c. 1807 ADPoetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but, when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
06c. 1807 ADI dare not guess: but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream. It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
07c. 1807 ADThe world is full of Woodmen who expel Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
08c. 1807 ADGreece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
09c. 1807 AD... Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that gem The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
10c. 1807 ADMan seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave A lasting chain for his own slavery; In fear and restless care that he may live, He toils for others, who must ever be The joyless thralls of his captivity; He murders, for his chief delight’s in ruin; He builds the altar, that its idol’s fee May be his very blood; he is pursuing, O, blind and willing wretch! his own obscure undoing.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
11c. 1807 ADThe flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay, Tempts, and then flies: What is this world’s delight? Lightning, that mocks the night, Brief even as bright.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
12c. 1807 ADThe great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination, and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
13c. 1807 ADYe seek for happiness—alas the day! Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold, Not in the fame nor in the envied sway, For which O willing slaves to custom old, Severe taskmistress, ye your hearts have sold. Ye seek for peace, and, when ye die, to dream No evil dreams; all mortal things are cold And senseless then; if aught survive, I deem It must be love and joy, for they immortal seem.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
14c. 1807 ADO spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness Wing-winged emblem! Brightest, best and fairest! Whence comest thou when with dark Winter's sadness The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest? Sister of Joy! thou art the child who wearest Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet: Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
15c. 1807 ADThe sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
18c. 1807 ADIn fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
19c. 1807 ADGod is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
20c. 1807 ADGod is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
21c. 1807 ADThe being called God...bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
24c. 1807 ADThe cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
