Percy Bysshe Shelley: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cloud

St. 7 (a cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person who is buried elsewhere)
The Cloud (1820)
Context: For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
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.

“I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Source: Epipsychidion (1821), l. 147
Context: Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wreckt.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, — perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

“Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 7
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)
Context: The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

Love , Life , Truth , Youth

“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book Ode to the West Wind

St. I
Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth.

Autumn , Dead

“I met Murder on the way —
He had a mask like Castlereagh”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Masque of Anarchy

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him.
St. 2
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)

Way

“Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book Ode to the West Wind

St. V
Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

“Nought may endure but Mutability.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mutability http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/anthology/Shelley/Mutability.htm (1816), st. 4
Context: p>We rest. — A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. — One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:It is the same! — For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.</p

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias

Source: Ozymandias

Despair

“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

Men , Solitude , Singing

“O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book Ode to the West Wind

St. V
Source: Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Beauty , Spring , Winter

“Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory —
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, When Soft Voices Die http://www.readprint.com/work-1367/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1821)
Source: The Complete Poems

Love , Art , Music , Sense

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number —
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 91
(1819)
Source: The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester

Sleep

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

Source: Adonais