Percy Bysshe Shelley cytaty

strona 8

„Podróżnik, wracający z starożytnej ziemi,
Rzekł do mnie: „Nóg olbrzymich z głazu dwoje sterczy
Wśród puszczy bez tułowia. W pobliżu za niemi
Tonie w piasku strzaskana twarz. Jej wzrok szyderczy,

Zacięte usta, wyraz zimnego rozkazu
Świadczą, iż rzeźbiarz dobrze na tej bryle głazu
Odtworzył skryte żądze, co, choć w poniewierce,
Przetrwały rękę mistrza i mocarza serce.

A na podstawie napis dochował się cało:
«Ja jestem Ozymandias, król królów. Mocarze!
Patrzcie na moje dzieła i przed moją chwałą

Gińcie z rozpaczy!» Więcej nic już nie zostało…
Gdzie stąpić, gruz bezkształtny oczom się ukaże
I piaski bielejące w pustyni obszarze.”

„Przyjaźń, drogi balsam… Uśmiech pośród zachmurzonych twarzy; umiłowany promień słońca; uścisk w samotności; schronienie w trudnościach; radość w smutku.”

„Spójrz na me dzieło, o Potężny, i rozpaczaj.
… wokół szczątków
Tego kolosalnego wraku pustynia się roztacza,
Naga, dzika i płaska, bez końca ni początku.”

„Codzienne obowiązki stają się piękne dzięki miłości.”

„O, jakże chciałbym być Antychrystem (…).”

“You lie—under a mistake,
For this is the most civil sort of lie
That can be given to a man's face. I now
Say what I think.”

“The dust of creeds outworn.”

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

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

“All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew.”

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

“My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do),
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.”

“Till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”

“Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to sensation.”

“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.”

“Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
The work of their own hearts, and this must be
Our chastisement or recompense.”

“There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthfulness: madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerable evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of society.”

“Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.”

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

“The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.”

“… why God made irreconcilable
Good and the means of good.”

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

“Have you not heard
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him?”

“I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.”

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”

“What is Freedom? — ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well —
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.”

“Peter was dull; he was at first
Dull,—oh so dull, so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed,
Still with this dulness was he cursed!
Dull,—beyond all conception, dull.”

“Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil
The shadows that float o’er Eternity’s vale;
Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love,
That will hail their blest advent to regions above.
For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway,
And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.”

“Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove,
Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother’s hate,
Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate
As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love:
He bears a load which nothing can remove,
A killing, withering weight.”

“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields; —
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. —
You with the unpaid bill, Despair, —
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, —
I will pay you in the grave, —
Death will listen to your stave.”

“Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.”

“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the human race to misery.”