Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’ (1820) l. 193
You will see Coleridge—he who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind,
Which, with its own internal lightning blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair— A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls— You will see Hunt—one of those happy souls
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it is—a tomb.
‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’ (1820) l. 202
Have you not heard
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him?
‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’ (1820) l. 235
His fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.
‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’ (1820) l. 240 (on Thomas Love Peacock)
When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead— When the cloud is scattered The rainbow’s glory is shed. When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.
‘Lines: When the lamp’
Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day’s azure eyes Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite’s destined halls.
‘Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills’ (1818) l. 90
Sun-girt city, thou hast been Ocean’s child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.
‘Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills’ (1818) l. 115 (on Venice)
The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single; All things, by a law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine?
‘Love’s Philosophy’
I met Murder on the way—
He had a mask like Castlereagh.
‘The Mask of Anarchy’ (1819) st. 2
His big tears, for he wept full well, Turned to mill-stones as they fell. And the little children, who Round his feet played to and fro, Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.
‘The Mask of Anarchy’ (1819) st. 4 (on ‘Fraud’ [Lord Eldon])
Nought may endure but Mutability.
‘Mutability’ (1816)
I stood within the City disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard The Mountain’s slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls.
‘Ode to Naples’ (1820) l. 1
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 wingéd 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, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819) l. 1
There are spread
On the blue suface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm.
‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819) l. 18
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystálline streams
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!
‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819) l. 29
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves.
‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819) l. 39
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819) l. 53
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.
‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819) l. 57
And, by the incantation of this verse,
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?
‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1819) l. 65
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
‘On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci’
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert.
‘Ozymandias’
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
‘Ozymandias’
Hell is a city much like London— A populous and smoky city.
‘Peter Bell the Third’ (1819) pt. 3, st. 1
But from the first ’twas Peter’s drift To be a kind of moral eunuch,
He touched the hem of Nature’s shift, Felt faint—and never dared uplift The closest, all-concealing tunic.
‘Peter Bell the Third’ (1819) pt. 4, st. 11
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.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1819) act 1, l. 191
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong, Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1819) act 1, l. 238
It doth repent me: words are quick and vain; Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 1, l. 303
Kingly conclaves stern and cold
Where blood with guilt is bought and sold.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 1, l. 530
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.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 1, l. 625
Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good: I am a God and cannot find it there.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 1, l. 638
The dust of creeds outworn.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 1, l. 697
On a poet’s lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 1, l. 737
To be
Omnipotent but friendless is to reign.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 2, scene 4, l. 47
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 2, scene 4, l. 73
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 2, scene 5, l. 72.
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless?—no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them, 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.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 3, sc. 4, l. 193
A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 4, l. 551
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; 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.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 4, l. 570
That sweet bondage which is freedom’s self.
‘Queen Mab’ (1813) canto 9, l. 76
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of water’s murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightst in dream.
‘The Question’
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets.
‘The Question’
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may.
‘The Question’
With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
‘The Revolt of Islam’ (1818) canto 5, st. 23
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew.
‘The Sensitive Plant’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 1
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
‘The Sensitive Plant’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 29
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows.
‘The Sensitive Plant’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 37
Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
‘Song’; adopted by Elgar as epigraph to his Second Symphony
Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low?
‘Song to the Men of England’
The seed ye sow, another reaps; The wealth ye find, another keeps; The robes ye weave, another wears; The arms ye forge, another bears.
‘Song to the Men of England’
Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life.
‘Sonnet’
Through the unheeding many he did move, A splendour among shadows, a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
‘Sonnet’
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.
‘Sonnet: England in 1819’
Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even: Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
‘Stanzas—April 1814’
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.
‘Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples’ (1818)
Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.
‘Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples’ (1818)
Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory— Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken.
‘To—: Music, when soft voices die’
The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
‘To—: One word is too often profaned’
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee:
Thou lovest—but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow
The world should listen then—as I am listening now.
‘To a Skylark’ (1819)
Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind,
Than calm in waters, seen.
‘To Jane: The Recollection’
Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear,— Swift be thy flight!
‘To Night’
Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon—
Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belovéd Night— Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!
‘To Night’
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,— And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
‘To the Moon’
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,— Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
‘To Wordsworth’
And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil.
‘The Waning Moon’
A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.
‘The Witch of Atlas’ (written 1820; published 1824) st. 5
For she was beautiful—her beauty made The bright world dim, and everything beside Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
‘The Witch of Atlas’ (written 1820; published 1824) st. 12
A single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought.
‘A Defence of Poetry’ (written 1821; published 1840)
The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.
‘A Defence of Poetry’ (written 1821, published 1840)
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
‘A Defence of Poetry’ (written 1821, published 1840)
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.
‘A Defence of Poetry’ (written 1821, published 1840).
7.76 William Shenstone 1714-63
The charm dissolves; th’aerial music’s past; The banquet ceases, and the vision flies.
‘Elegy 11. He complains how soon the pleasing novelty of life is over’
Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round, Where’er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome, at an inn.
‘Written at an Inn at Henley’ (1758).
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in.
‘Essays on Men, Manners, and Things’ ‘On Politics’ in ‘Works’ (1764) vol. 2.
A fool and his words are soon parted.
‘Essays on Men, Manners, and Things’ ‘On Reserve’ in ‘Works in Verse and Prose’ (1764) vol. 2
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and foxhunters.
‘Essays on Men, Manners, and Things’ ‘On Writing and Books’ in ‘Works in Verse and Prose’ (1764) vol. 2
Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.
‘Essays on Men, Manners, and Things’ ‘On Writing and Books’ in ‘Works in Verse and Prose’ (1764) vol. 2
To endeavour, all one’s days, to fortify our minds with learning and philosophy, is to spend so much in armour that one has nothing left to defend.
‘Essays on Men, Manners, and Things’ ‘On Writing and Books’ in ‘Works in Verse and Prose’ (1764) vol. 2
7.77 E. A. Sheppard
See Charles Collins (3.145) in Volume I
7.78 Philip Henry Sheridan 1831-88
