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In The Firm Expectation That When London Shall Be A Habitation Of Bitterns, When St. Paul And Westminster Abbey Shall Stand Shapeless And Nameless Ruins In The Midst Of An Unpeopled Marsh, When The Piers Of Waterloo Bridge Shall Become The Nuclei Of Islets Of Reeds And Osiers, And Cast The Jagged Shadows Of Their Broken Arches On The Solitary Stream, Some Transatlantic Commentator Will Be Weighing In The Scales Of Some New And Now Unimagined System Of Criticism The Respective Merits Of The Bells And The Fudges And Their Historians.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

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In The Firm Expectation

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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In The Firm Expectation That When London Shall Be A Habitation Of Bitterns, When St. Paul And Westminster Abbey Shall Stand Shapeless And Nameless Ruins In The Midst Of An Unpeopled Marsh, When The Piers Of Waterloo Bridge Shall Become The Nuclei Of Islets Of Reeds And Osiers, And Cast The Jagged Shadows Of Their Broken Arches On The Solitary Stream, Some Transatlantic Commentator Will Be Weighing In The Scales Of Some New And Now Unimagined System Of Criticism The Respective Merits Of The Bells And The Fudges And Their Historians.

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Deep Truth Is Imageless.

The Thoughts Which The Word "god" Suggests To The Human Mind Are Susceptible Of As Many Variations As Human Minds Themselves.

You Ought To Love All Mankind; Nay, Every Individual Of Mankind. You Ought Not To Love The Individuals Of Your Domestic Circles Less, But To Love Those Who Exist Beyond It More.

The Warm Sun Is Failing, The Bleak Wind Is Wailing, The Bare Boughs Are Sighing, The Pale Flowers Are Dying, And The Year On The Earth Her Death-bed, In A Shroud Of Leaves Dead, Is Lying. . . .

Those Who Inflict Must Suffer, For They See The Work Of Their Own Hearts, And This Must Be Our Chastisement Or Recompense.

All Things Are Sold: The Very Light Of Heaven Is Venal; Earth's Unsparing Gifts Of Love, The Smallest And Most Despicable Things That Lurk In The Abysses Of The Deep, All Objects Of Our Life, Even Life Itself, And The Poor Pittance Which The Laws Allow Of Liberty, The Fellowship Of Man, Those Duties Which His Heart Of Human Love Should Urge Him To Perform Instinctively, Are Bought And Sold As In A Public Mart Of Not Disguising Selfishness, That Sets On Each Its Price, The Stamp-mark Of Her Reign.

Jealousy's Eyes Are Green.

A Poet Is A Nightingale, Who Sits In Darkness And Sings To Cheer Its Own Solitude With Sweet Sounds.

Better Than All Measures Of Delightful Sound, Better Than All Treasures That In Books Are Found, Thy Skill To Poet Were, Thou Scorner Of The Ground!

What Is Freedom? Ye Can Tell That Which Slavery Is, Too Well For Its Very Name Has Grown To An Echo Of Your Own.

The More We Study The More We Discover Our Ignorance.

The Galilean Is Not A Favorite Of Mine. So Far From Owing Him Any Thanks For His Favor, I Cannot Avoid Confessing That I Owe A Secret Grudge To His Carpentership.

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.

Let The Advocate Of Animal Food, Force Himself To A Decisive Experiment On Its Fitness, And As Plutarch Recommends, Tear A Living Lamb With His Teeth, And Plunging His Head Into Its Vitals, Slake His Thirst With The Steaming Blood; When Fresh From The Deed Of Horror Let Him Revert To The Irresistible Instincts Of Nature That Would Rise In Judgment Against It, And Say, Nature Formed Me For Such Work As This. Then, And Then Only, Would He Be Consistent.

In The Golden Lightning Of The Sunken Sun O'er Which Clouds Are Brightening, Thou Dost Float And Run Like An Unbodied Joy Whose Race Is Just Begun.

The Discussion Of Any Subject Is A Right That You Have Brought Into The World With Your Heart And Tongue. Resign Your Heart's Blood Before You Part With This Inestimable Privilege Of Man.

All Love Is Sweet Given Or Returned. Common As Light Is Love, And Its Familiar Voice Wearies Not Ever.

It Is Easier To Suppose That The Universe Has Existed For All Eternity Than To Conceive A Being Beyond Its Limits Capable Of Creating It.

Yes, Marriage Is Hateful, Detestable. A Kind Of Ineffable, Sickening Disgust Seizes My Mind When I Think Of This Most Despotic, Most Unrequited Fetter Which Prejudice Has Forged To Confine Its Energies.

Let The Blue Sky Overhead, The Green Earth On Which Ye Tread, All That Must Eternal Be Witness The Solemnity.

Our Sweetest Songs Are Those That Tell Of Saddest Thought.

Familiar Acts Are Beautiful Through Love.

It Is True That The Reluctance To Abstain From Animal Food, In Those Who Have Been Long Accustomed To Its Stimulus, Is So Great In Some Persons Of Weak Minds, As To Be Scarcely Overcome; But This Is Far From Bringing Any Argument In Its Favour

Among True And Real Friends, All Is Common; And Were Ignorance And Envy And Superstition Banished From The World, All Mankind Would Be Friend.

Dar'st Thou Amid The Varied Multitude To Live Alone, An Isolated Thing?

It Is Not A Merit To Tolerate, But Rather A Crime To Be Intolerant.

The Flood Of Time Is Rolling On; We Stand Upon Its Brink, Whilst They Are Gone To Glide In Peace Down Death's Mysterious Stream. Have Ye Done Well?

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.

In Proportion As A Man Is Selfish, So Far Has He Receded From The Motive Which Constitutes Virtue.

O World! O Life! O Time! On Whose Last Steps I Climb

A Christian, A Deist, A Turk, And A Jew, Have Equal Rights: They Are Men And Brethren.

Ah! What A Divine Religion Might Be Found Out If Charity Were Really Made The Principle Of It Instead Of Faith.

Our Adonais Has Drunk Poisonoh! What Deaf And Viperous Murderer Could Crown Life's Early Cup With Such A Draught Of Woe?

When The Lamp Is Shattered The Light In The Dust Lies Dead - When The Cloud Is Scattered The Rainbow's Glory Is Shed.

God Is Represented As Infinite, Eternal, Incomprehensible; He Is Contained Under Every Predicate In Non That The Logic Of Ignorance Could Fabricate.

I Love Tranquil Solitude.

He Has Outsoared The Shadow Of Our Night; Envy And Calumny And Hate And Pain, And That Unrest Which Men Miscall Delight, Can Touch Him Not And Torture Not Again; From The Contagion Of The World's Slow Stain, He Is Secure.

... Virtue Owns A More Eternal Foe Than Force Or Fraud: Old Custom, Legal Crime, And Bloody Faith The Foulest Birth Of Time.

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.

Ah, Woe Is Me! Winter Is Come And Gone. But Grief Returns With The Revolving Year.

Constancy Has Nothing Virtuous In Itself, Independently Of The Pleasure It Confers, And Partakes Of The Temporizing Spirit Of Vice In Proportion As It Endures Tamely Moral Defects Of Magnitude In The Object Of Its Indiscreet Choice.

A Dream Has Power To Poison Sleep.

It Is Impossible That Had Buonaparte Descended From A Race Of Vegetable Feeders That He Could Have Had Either The Inclination Or The Power To Ascend The Throne Of The Bourbons.

The Intense Atom Glows A Moment, Then Is Quenched In A Most Cold Repose.

This, And No Other, Is Justice: To Consider, Under All The Circumstances And Consequences Of A Particular Case, How The Greatest Quantity And Purest Quality Of Happiness Will Ensue From Any Action ... There Is No Other Justice.

The Encomium Of One Incapable Of Flattery Is Indeed Flattering.

The Moon Of Mahomet Arose, And It Shall Set; While, Blazoned As On Heaven's Immortal Noon, The Cross Leads Generations On.

Peace, 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 Strife.

Reason Respects The Differences, And Imagination The Similitudes Of Things.

The Splendors Of The Firmament Of Time May Be Eclipsed, But Are Extinguished Not; Like Stars To Their Appointed Height They Climb And Death Is A Low Mist Which Cannot Blot The Brightness It May Veil.

Fear Not For The Future, Weep Not For The Past.

And On The Pedestal These Words Appear:  '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.

Sing Again, With Your Dear Voice Revealing. A Tone Of Some World Far From Ours, Where Music And Moonlight And Feeling Are One.

I Have Neither Curiosity, Interest, Pain Nor Pleasure, In Anything, Good Or Evil, They Can Say Of Me. I Feel Only A Slight Disgust, And A Sort Of Wonder That They Presume To Write My Name.

I Love All Waste And Solitary Places; Where We Taste The Pleasure Of Believing What We See Is Boundless, As We Wish Our Souls To Be.

And Priests Dare Babble Of A God Of Peace, Even Whilst Their Hands Are Red With Guiltless Blood, Murdering The While, Uprooting Every Germ Of Truth, Exterminating, Spoiling All, Making The Earth A Slaughter - House!

There Is A Harmony In Autumn, And A Luster In Its Sky, Which Through The Summer Is Not Heard Or Seen, As If It Could Not Be, As If It Had Not Been!

A Pard-like Spirit, Beautiful And Swift.

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.

When The Power Of Imparting Joy Is Equal To The Will, The Human Soul Requires No Other Heaven.

Jesus Christ Opposed With Earnest Eloquence The Panic Fears And Hateful Superstitions Which Have Enslaved Mankind For Ages.

First Our Pleasures Die - And Then Our Hopes, And Then Our Fears - And When These Are Dead, The Debt Is Due Dust Claims Dust - And We Die Too.

There Is No Real Wealth But The Labour Of Man. Were The Mountains Of Gold And The Valleys Of Silver, The World Would Not Be One Grain Of Corn The Richer; No One Comfort Would Be Added To The Human Race.

A Lovely Lady, Garmented In Light From Her Own Beauty.

I Fall Upon The Thorns Of Life.

Truth Has Always Been Found To Promote The Best Interests Of Mankind.

Poets, Not Otherwise Than Philosophers, Painters, Sculptors, And Musicians, Are, In One Sense, The Creators, And, In Another, The Creations, Of Their Age.

Age Cannot Love Destroy, But Perfidy Can Blast The Flower, Even When In Most Unwary Hour It Blooms In Fancy's Bower. Age Cannot Love Destroy, But Perfidy Can Rend The Shrine In Which Its Vermeil Splendours Shine.

O! I Burn With Impatience For The Moment Of The Dissolution Of Intolerance; It Has Injured Me.

Where Art Thou, Beloved To-morrow? When Young And Old, And Strong And Weak, Rich And Poor, Through Joy And Sorrow, Thy Sweet Smiles We Ever Seek,-- In Thy Place--ah! Well-a-day! We Find The Thing We Fled--to-day!

Before Man Can Be Free, And Equal, And Truly Wise, He Must Cast Aside The Chains Of Habit And Superstition; He Must Strip Sensuality Of Its Pomp, And Selfishness Of Its Excuses, And Contemplate Actions And Objects As They Really Are.

As Belief Is A Passion Of The Mind, No Degree Of Criminality Is Attachable To Disbelief.

In A Drama Of The Highest Order There Is Little Food For Censure Or Hatred; It Teaches Rather Self-knowledge And Self-respect.

His Fine Wit Makes Such A Wound, The Knife Is Lost In It.

Think Ye By Gazing On Each Other's Eyes To Multiply Your Lovely Selves?

And Many An Ante-natal Tomb Where Butterflies Dream Of The Life To Come.

Obscenity, Which Is Ever Blasphemy Against The Divine Beauty In Life, Is A Monster For Which The Corruption Of Society Forever Brings Forth New Food, Which It Devours In Secret.

Worlds On Worlds Are Rolling Ever From Creation To Decay, Like The Bubbles On A River Sparkling, Bursting, Borne Away.

The Allegory Of Adam And Eve Eating Of The Tree Of Evil, And Entailing Upon Their Posterity The Wrath Of God And The Loss Of Everlasting Life, Admits Of No Other Explanation Than The Disease And Crime That Have Flowed From Unnatural Diet.

A Husband And Wife Ought To Continue United So Long As They Love Each Other. Any Law Which Should Bind Them To Cohabitation For One Moment After The Decay Of Their Affection Would Be A Most Intolerable Tyranny, And The Most Unworthy Of Toleration.

For The Sensitive Plant Has No Bright Flower; Radiance And Odour Are Not Its Dower; It Loves, Even Like Love, Its Deep Heart Is Full, It Desires What It Has Not, The Beautiful.

Religion! But For Thee, Prolific Fiend, Who Peoplest Earth With Demons, Hell With Men, And Heaven With Slaves!

Can Man Be Free If Woman Be A Slave?

Sometimes The Devil Is A Gentleman.

In The Firm Expectation That When London Shall Be A Habitation Of Bitterns, When St. Paul And Westminster Abbey Shall Stand Shapeless And Nameless Ruins In The Midst Of An Unpeopled Marsh, When The Piers Of Waterloo Bridge Shall Become The Nuclei Of Islets Of Reeds And Osiers, And Cast The Jagged Shadows Of Their Broken Arches On The Solitary Stream, Some Transatlantic Commentator Will Be Weighing In The Scales Of Some New And Now Unimagined System Of Criticism The Respective Merits Of The Bells And The Fudges And Their Historians.

Fate,time,occasion,chance, And Change? To These All Things Are Subject But Eternal Love.

Nature Rejects The Monarch, Not The Man; The Subject, Not The Citizen... The Man Of Virtuous Soul Commands Not, Nor Obeys.

What! Alive, And So Bold, O Earth?

The One Remains, The Many Change And Pass; Heaven's Light Forever Shines, Earth's Shadows Fly; Life, Like A Dome Of Many-coloured Glass, Stains The White Radiance Of Eternity, Until Death Tramples It To Fragments.

I Wield The Flail Of The Lashing Hail, And Whiten The Green Plains Under; And Then Again I Dissolve It In Rain, And Laugh As I Pass In Thunder.

Poetry 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...and The Conscious Portions Of Our Natures Are Unprophetic Either Of Its Approach Or Its Departure.

Joy, Once Lost, Is Pain

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.

Thy Words Are Like A Cloud Of Winged Snakes.

The Awful Shadow Of Some Unseen Power Floats Though Unseen Among Us; Visiting This Various World With As Inconstant Wing As Summer Winds That Creep From Flower To Flower; Like Moonbeams That Behind Some Piny Mountain Shower, It Visits With Inconstant Glance Each Human Heart And Countenance; Like Hues And Harmonies Of Evening, Like Clouds In Starlight Widely Spread, Like Memory Of Music Fled, Like Aught That For Its Grace May Be Dear, And Yet Dearer For Its Mystery.

Oh, That The Wise From Their Bright Minds Would Kindle Such Lamps Within The Dome Of This Dim World That The Pale Name Of Priest Might Shrink And Dwindle Into The Hell From Which It First Was Furled.

I Am The Daughter Of Earth And Water, And The Nursling Of The Sky; I Pass Through The Pores Of The Ocean And Shores; I Change, But I Cannot Die. 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.

The Sunlight Claps The Earth, And The Moonbeams Kiss The Sea: What Are All These Kissings Worth, If Thou Kiss Not Me?

One Word Is Too Often Profaned For Me To Profane It, One Feeling Too Falsely Disdained For Thee To Disdain It.

Worse Than Despair, Worse Than The Bitterness Of Death, Is Hope.

Power, Like A Desolating Pestilence, Pollutes Whatever It Touches.

Know Ye What It Is To Be A Child? It Is To Have A Spirit Yet Streaming From The Waters Of Baptism; It Is To Believe In Love, To Believe In Loveliness, To Believe In Belief.

He Wanders, Like A Day-appearing Dream, Through The Dim Wildernesses Of The Mind; Through Desert Woods And Tracts, Which Seem Like Ocean, Homeless, Boundless, Unconfined.

All Of Us Who Are Worth Anything, Spend Our Manhood In Unlearning The Follies, Or Expiating The Mistakes Of Our Youth.

Self Improvement

I Have Drunken Deep Of Joy.

Some Say That Gleams Of A Remoter World Visit The Soul In Sleep That Death Is Slumber, And That Its Shapes The Busy Thoughts Outnumber Of Those Who Wake And Live.

Government Is An Evil; It Is Only The Thoughtlessness And Vices Of Men That Make It A Necessary Evil. When All Men Are Good And Wise, Government Will Of Itself Decay.

Forget The Dead, The Past? O Yet There Are Ghosts That May Take Revenge For It, Memories That Make The Heart A Tomb, Regrets Which Gild Thro’ The Spirit’s Gloom, And With Ghastly Whispers Tell That Joy, Once Lost, Is Pain.

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 Consider Poetry Very Subordinate To Moral And Political Science.

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.

Duty And Dereliction Guide Thee Back To Solitude.

The Wise Want Love; And Those Who Love Want Wisdom.

The Most Fertile Districts Of The Habitable Globe Are Now Actually Cultivated By Men For Animals, At A Delay And Waste Of Aliment Absolutely Incapable Of Calculation

Sorrow, Terror, Anguish, Despair Itself Are Often The Chosen Expressions Of An Approximation To The Highest Good. Our Sympathy In Tragic Fiction Depends On This Principle; Tragedy Delights By Affording A Shadow Of The Pleasure Which Exists In Pain. This Is The Source Also Of The Melancholy Which Is Inseparable From The Sweetest Melody. The Pleasure That Is In Sorrow Is Sweeter Than The Pleasure Of Pleasure Itself.

We Are All Greeks. Our Laws, Our Literature, Our Religion, Our Arts, Have Their Root In Greece.

Nothing In The World Is Single, All Things By A Law Divine, In One Spirit Meet And Mingle-why Not I With Thine?

I Have Drunken Deep Of Joy, And I Will Taste No Other Wine Tonight.

The Crime Of Inquiry Is One Which Religion Never Has Forgiven.

Man's Yesterday May Never Be Like His Morrow; Nought May Endure But Mutability.

The Jealous Keys Of Truth's Eternal Doors.

A System Could Not Well Have Been Devised More Studiously Hostile To Human Happiness Than Marriage.

Love's Very Pain Is Sweet

The Most Refined Abstractions Of Logic Conduct To A View Of Life, Which, Though Startling To The Apprehension, Is, In Fact, That Which The Habitual Sense Of Its Repeated Combinations Has Extinguished In Us. It Strips, As It Were, The Painted Curtain From This Scene Of Things. I Confess That I Am One Of Those Who Are Unable To Refuse My Assent To The Conclusions Of Those Philosophers Who Assert That Nothing Exists But As It Is Perceived.

Sounds Of Vernal Showers On The Twinkling Grass, Rain Awaken'd Flowers, All That Ever Was Joyous, And Clear, And Fresh, Thy Music Doth Surpass

Peace Is In The Grave. The Grave Hides All Things Beautiful And Good. I Am A God And Cannot Find It There, Nor Would I Seek It; For, Though Dread Revenge, This Is Defeat, Fierce King, Not Victory.

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, Who Feel That They Are Moved And Softened, Yet Know Not Whence Or Why.

Reviewers, With Some Rare Exceptions, Are A Most Stupid And Malignant Race. As A Bankrupt Thief Turns Thief-taker In Despair, So An Unsuccessful Author Turns Critic.

The Old Laws Of England They Whose Reverend Heads With Age Are Gray, Children Of A Wiser Day; And Whose Solemn Voice Must Be Thine Own Echo Liberty!

My Neighbour, Or My Servant, Or My Child, Has Done Me An Injury, And It Is Just That He Should Suffer An Injury In Return. Such Is The Doctrine Which Jesus Christ Summoned His Whole Resources Of Persuasion To Oppose.

Until The Mind Can Love, And Admire, And Trust, And Hope, And Endure, Reasoned Principles Of Moral Conduct Are Seeds Cast Upon The Highway Of Life Which The Unconscious Passenger Tramples Into Dust.

No One Has Yet Been Found Resolute Enough In Dogmatizing To Deny That Nature Made Man Equal; That Society Has Destroyed This Equality Is A Truth Not More Incontrovertible.

All Spirits Are Enslaved Which Serve Things Evil

Positive Atheism

Thou Who Didst Waken From His Summer Dreams The Blue Mediterranean, Where He Lay, Lull'd By The Coil Of His Crystalline Streams Beside A Pumice Isle In Baiæ'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.

It Were As Wise To Cast A Violet Into A Crucible That You Might Discover The Formal Principle Of Its Color And Odor, As Seek To Transfuse From One Language Into Another The Creations Of A Poet. The Plant Must Spring Again From Its Seed, Or It Will Bear No Flower -- And This Is The Burthen Of The Curse Of Babel.

Every Man, In Proportion To His Virtue, Considers Himself, With Respect To The Great Community Of Mankind, As The Steward And Guardian Of Their Interests In The Property Which He Chances To Possess. Every Man, In Proportion To His Wisdom, Sees The Manner In Which It Is His Duty To Employ The Resources Which The Consent Of Mankind Has Intrusted To His Discretion.

Religion Pervades Intensely The Whole Frame Of Society, And Is According To The Temper Of The Mind Which It Inhabits, A Passion, A Persuasion, An Excuse, A Refuge; Never A Check.

Alas! I Have Nor Hope Nor Health, Nor Peace Within Nor Calm Around, Nor That Content Surpassing Wealth The Sage In Meditation Found.

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.

The Quick Dreams, The Passion-winged Ministers Of Thought.

A Story Of Particular Facts Is A Mirror Which Obscures And Distorts That Which Should Be Beautiful; Poetry Is A Mirror Which Makes Beautiful That Which It Distorts.

Drive My Dead Thoughts Over The Universe Like Withered Leaves To Quicken A New Birth! 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?

Whatever Strengthens And Purifies The Affections, Enlarges The Imagination, And Adds Spirit To Sense, Is Useful.

The Howl Of Self-interest Is Loud ... But The Heart Is Black Which Throbs Solely To Its Note.

If Certain Critics Were As Clearsighted As They Are Malignant, How Great Would Be The Benefit To Be Derived From Their Writings!

February... Bending From Heaven, In Azure Mirth, It Kissed The Forehead Of The Earth, And Smiled Upon The Silent Sea, And Bade The Frozen Streams Be Free, And Waked To Music All Their Fountains, And Breathed Upon The Frozen Mountains.

What Is Life? Thoughts And Feelings Arise, With Or Without Our Will, And We Employ Words To Express Them. We Are Born, And Our Birth Is Unremembered And Our Infancy Remembered But In Fragments. We Live On, And In Living We Lose The Apprehension Of Life. How Vain Is It To Think That Words Can Penetrate The Mystery Of Our Being. Rightly Used They May Make Evident Our Ignorance Of Ourselves, And This Is Much.

There Is Eloquence In The Tongueless Wind, And A Melody In The Flowing Brooks And The Rustling Of The Reeds Beside Them, Which By Their Inconceivable Relation To Something Within The Soul, Awaken The Spirits To A Dance Of Breathless Rapture, And Bring Tears Of Mysterious Tenderness To The Eyes, Like The Enthusiasm Of Patriotic Success, Or The Voice Of One Beloved Singing To You Alone.

History Is A Cyclic Poem Written By Time Upon The Memories Of Man.

For This Is The Most Civil Sort Of Lie That Can Be Given To A Man's Face. I Now Say What I Think.

Belief Is Involuntary; Nothing Involuntary Is Meritorious Or Reprehensible. A Man Ought Not To Be Considered Worse Or Better For His Belief.

As Long As Skies Are Blue, And Fields Are Green Evening Must Usher Night, Night Urge The Morrow, Month Follow Month With Woe, And Year Wake Year To Sorrow

I Cannot Endure The Horror, The Evil, Which Comes To Self In Solitude.

When A Thing Is Said To Be Not Worth Refuting You May Be Sure That Either It Is Flagrantly Stupid - In Which Case All Comment Is Superfluous - Or It Is Something Formidable, The Very Crux Of The Problem.

Is It Not Odd That The Only Generous Person I Ever Knew, Who Had Money To Be Generous With, Should Be A Stockbroker.

January Gray Is Here, Like A Sexton By Her Grave; February Bears The Bier, March With Grief Doth Howl And Rave, And April Weeps -- But, O Ye Hours! Follow With May's Fairest Flowers.

When A Man Marries, Dies, Or Turns Hindu, His Best Friends Hear No More Of Him.

Men Must Reap The Things They Sow, Force From Force Must Ever Flow.

Most Wretched Men Are Cradled Into Poetry By Wrong: They Learn In Suffering What They Teach In Song.

You Would Not Easily Guess All The Modes Of Distress Which Torture The Tenants Of Earth; And The Various Evils, Which Like So Many Devils, Attend The Poor Souls From Their Birth.

Man, Who Wert Once A Despot And A Slave, A Dupe And A Deceiver! A Decay, A Traveller From The Cradle To The Grave Through The Dim Night Of This Immortal Day.

Rough Wind, The Moanest Loud Grief Too Sad For Song; Wild Wind, When Sullen Cloud Knells All The Night Long; Sad Storm, Whose Tears Are Vain, Bare Woods, Whose Branches Strain, Deep Caves And Dreary Main, Wail, For The World's Wrong!

I Know The Cause Of All Human Disappointment -- Worldly Prejudice.

I Could Lie Down Like A Tired Child, And Weep Away The Life Of Care Which I Have Borne, And Yet Must Bear.

In Proportion To The Love Existing Among Men, So Will Be The Community Of Property And Power. Among True And Real Friends, All Is Common; And, Were Ignorance And Envy And Superstition Banished From The World, All Mankind Would Be Friends. The Only Perfect And Genuine Republic Is That Which Comprehends Every Living Being. Those Distinctions Which Have Been Artificially Set Up, Of Nations, Societies, Families, And Religions, Are Only General Names, Expressing The Abhorrence And Contempt With Which Men Blindly Consider Their Fellowmen.

In Each Human Heart Terror Survives The Ravin It Has Gorged: The Loftiest Fear All That They Would Disdain To Think Were True: Hypocrisy And Custom Make Their Minds The Fanes Of Many A Worship, Now Outworn. They Dare Not Devise Good For Man's Estate, And Yet They Know Not That They Do Not Dare.

Sometimes It's Better To Put Love Into Hugs Than To Put It Into Words. Soul Meets Soul On Lovers' Lips.

Contemporary Criticism Only Represents The Amount Of Ignorance Genius Has To Contend With. . . . Time Will Reverse The Judgement Of The Vulgar.

Where Is Perfection? Where I Cannot Reach.

Honour Sits Smiling At The Sale Of Truth.

Life And The World, Or Whatever We Call That Which We Are And Feel, Is An Astonishing Thing. The Mist Of Familiarity Obscures From Us The Wonder Of Our Being. We Are Struck With Admiration At Some Of Its Transient Modifications, But It Is Itself The Great Miracle.

Man Who Man Would Be, Must Rule The Empire Of Himself.

O Heart, And Mind, And Thoughts! What Thing Do You Hope To Inherit In The Grave Below?

Poetry Is A Sword Of Lightning, Ever Unsheathed, Which Consumes The Scabbard That Would Contain It.

I Am Not Much Of A Hand At Love Songs, You See I Mingle Metaphysics With Even This, But Perhaps In This Age Of Philosophy That May Be Excused.

Underneath Day's Azure Eyes, Ocean's Nursling, Venice Lies, A Peopled Labyrinth Of Walls, Amphitrite's Destined Halls

Government Has No Rights; It Is A Delegation From Several Individuals For The Purpose Of Securing Their Own. It Is Therefore Just, Only So Far As It Exists By Their Consent, Useful Only So Far As It Operates To Their Well-being.

The Cloud Shadows Of Midnight Possess Their Own Repose.

Thou Demandest What Is Love? It Is That Powerful Attraction Towards All That We Conceive, Or Fear, Or Hope Beyond Ourselves, When We Find Within Our Own Thoughts The Chasm Of An Insufficient Void, And Seek To Awaken In All Things That Are, A Community With What We Experience Within Ourselves.

That Sweet Sleep Which Medicines All Pain.

Change Is Certain. Peace Is Followed By Disturbances; Departure Of Evil Men By Their Return. Such Recurrences Should Not Constitute Occasions For Sadness But Realities For Awareness, So That One May Be Happy In The Interim.

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.

Music, When Soft Voices Die Vibrates In The Memory.

It Is Vain Philosophy That Supposes More Causes Than Are Exactly Adequate To Explain The Phenomena Of Things.

Twin-sister Of Religion, Selfishness.

And Spring Arose On The Garden Fair, Like The Spirit Of Love Felt Everywhere; And Each Flower And Herb On Earth's Dark Breast Rose From The Dreams Of Its Wintry Rest.

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.

At The Very Time That Philosophers Of The Most Enterprising Benevolence Were Founding In Greece Those Institutions Which Have Rendered It The Wonder And Luminary Of The World, Am I Required To Believe That The Weak And Wicked King Of An Obscure And Barbarous Nation, A Murderer, A Traitor And A Tyrant, Was The Man After God's Own Heart?

...ere Midnight’s Frown And Morning’s Smile, Ere Thou And Peace May Meet.

Thou Paradise Of Exiles, Italy!

There Are Two Italies.... The One Is The Most Sublime And Lovely Contemplation That Can Be Conceived By The Imagination Of Man; The Other Is The Most Degraded, Disgusting, And Odious. What Do You Think? Young Women Of Rank Actually Eat - You Will Never Guess What - Garlick! Our Poor Friend Lord Byron Is Quite Corrupted By Living Among These People, And In Fact, Is Going On In A Way Not Worthy Of Him.

Death Is The Veil Which Those Who Live Call Life; They Sleep, And It Is Lifted.

Every Fanatic Or Enemy Of Virtue Is Not At Liberty To Misrepresent The Greatest Geniuses And Most Heroic Defenders Of All That Is Valuable In This Mortal World.

Dust To The Dust! But The Pure Spirit Shall Flow Back To The Burning Fountain Whence It Came, A Portion Of The Eternal.

Poet's Food Is Love And Fame.

Tragedy Delights By Affording A Shadow Of The Pleasure Which Exists In Pain.

A Poet, As He Is The Author To Others Of The Highest Wisdom, Pleasure, Virtue, And Glory, So He Ought Personally To Be The Happiest, The Best, The Wisest, And The Most Illustrious Of Men.

O Weep For Adonis - He Is Dead." "peace. He Is Not Dead He Doth Not Sleep - He Hath Wakened From The Dream Of Life

Poetry Lifts The Veil From The Hidden Beauty Of The World, And Makes Familiar Objects Be As If They Were Not Familiar.

Revenge Is The Naked Idol Of The Worship Of A Semi-barbarous Age.

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