Percy Bysshe Shelley: Likeness (page 2)

“Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 8
(1819)

Death , Horse

“Hell is a city much like London —
A populous and smoky city.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peter Bell the Third http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4697 (1819), Pt. III, st. 1

Hell

“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.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 1060

Age , World , Faith , Smile

“And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Source: To Jane: The Invitation (1822), l. 17

World , Way , Flowers , Appearance

“Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto III
Queen Mab (1813)

Men , Truth , Soul , Game

“Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus, Act I, l. 632
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

“Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 195

World , Star

“And others came… Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and GloOms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XIII
Adonais (1821)

Pleasure , Fear , Family , Smile

“Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Spirit of the Hour, Act III, sc. iv, l. 200
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Death , Star , Chance

“Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples http://www.readprint.com/work-1373/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1818), st. 5

Life , Death , Lie , Feeling

“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.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Sensitive Plant http://www.kalliope.org/digt.pl?longdid=shelley2003060601 (1820), Pt. I, st. 1

Kiss , Light , Night

“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.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXX
Adonais (1821)

“Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 682

Light , Sea

“The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. LV
Adonais (1821)

Soul , Star

“Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 79
(1819)

War

“This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 554–561
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Love , World , Spring , Heart

“Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley To a Skylark

St. 3
To a Skylark (1821)

Joy

“All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God;
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Asia, Act II, sc. v, l. 39
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Love , God , Feeling , Light

“My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 23
(1819)

Time , Waiting