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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.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

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The Most Refined Abstractions

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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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.

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How Beautiful Is Sunset When The Glow Of Heaven Descends Upon A Land Like Thee, Thou Paradise Of Exiles, Italy!

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.

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.

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 Beauty Of The Internal Nature Cannot Be So Far Concealed By Its Accidental Vesture, But That The Spirit Of Its Form Shall Communicate Itself To The Very Disguise And Indicate The Shape It Hides From The Manner In Which It Is Worn. A Majestic Form And Graceful Motions Will Express Themselves Through The Most Barbarous And Tasteless Costume.

Majestic Beauty

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

(title: To The Moon) 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?

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

Life May Change, But It May Fly Not; Hope May Vanish, But Can Die Not; Truth Be Veiled, But Still It Burneth; Love Repulsed, - But It Returneth!

All High Poetry Is Infinite; It Is As The First Acorn, Which Contained All Oaks Potentially.

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.

It Is Only By Softening And Disguising Dead Flesh By Culinary Preparation That It Is Rendered Susceptible Of Mastication Or Digestion, And That The Sight Of Its Bloody Juices And Raw Horror Does Not Excite Intolerable Loathing And Disgust.

Vegetarian Diet

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

There Is No God. This Negation Must Be Understood Solely To Affect A Creative Deity. The Hypothesis Of A Pervading Spirit Co-eternal With The Universe Remains Unshaken.

Thou Paradise Of Exiles, Italy!

[l]ike Thee To Those In Sorrow, Comes To Bid A Sweet Good-morrow To The Rough Year Just Awake In Its Cradle On The Brake. The Brightest Hour Of Unborn Spring, Through The Winter Wandering, Found, It Seems, The Halcyon Morn To Hoar February Born.

Kings Are Like Stars,-they Rise And Set, They Have The Worship Of The World, But No Repose.

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.

Necessity, Thou Mother Of The World!

Are We Not Formed, As Notes Of Music Are, For One Another, Though Dissimilar?

And Many More Destructions Played In This Ghastly Masquerade, All Disguised, Even To The Eyes, Like Bishops, Lawyers, Peers, Or Spies.

Senseless Is The Breast And Cold Which Relenting Love Would Fold; Bloodless Are The Veins And Chill Which The Pulse Of Pain Did Fill; Every Little Living Nerve That From Bitter Words Did Swerve Round The Tortur'd Lips And Brow, Are Like Sapless Leaflets Now Frozen Upon December's Bough.

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.

It Is Thus That The Generality Of Mankind, Whose Lot Is Ignorance, Attributes To The Divinity, Not Only The Unusual Effects Which Strike Them, But Moreover The Most Simple Events, Of Which The Causes Are The Most Simple To Understand By Whomever Is Able To Study Them. In A Word, Man Has Always Respected Unknown Causes, Surprising Effects That His Ignorance Kept Him From Unraveling. It Was On This Debris Of Nature That Man Raised The Imaginary Colossus Of The Divinity.

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.

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.

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.

I Stood Within The City Disinterred; And Heard The Autumnal Leaves Like Light Footfalls Of Spirits Passng Through The Streets; And Heard The Mountain's Slumberous Voice At Intervals Thrill Through Those Roofless Halls; The Oracular Thunder Penetrating Shook The Listening Soul In My Suspended Blood.

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!

Unfathomable Sea! Whose Waves Are Years, Ocean Of Time, Whose Waters Of Deep Woe Are Brackish With The Salt Of Human Tears! Thou Shoreless Flood, Which In Thy Ebb And Flow Claspest The Limits Of Mortality! And Sick Of Prey, Yet Howling On For More, Vomitest Thy Wrecks On Its Inhospitable Shore, Treacherous In Calm, And Terrible In Storm, Who Shall Put Forth On Thee, Unfathomable Sea?

Oh That Simplicity And Innocence Its Own Unvalued Work So Seldom Knows!

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?

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.

See The Mountains Kiss High Heaven And The Waves Clasp One Another; No Sister-flower Would Be Forgiven If It Disdained Its Brother; And The Sunlight Clasps The Earth, And The Moonbeams Kiss The Sea - What Is All This Sweet Work Worth If Thou Kiss Not Me?

Many A Green Isle Needs Must Be In The Deep Wide Sea Of Misery, Or The Mariner, Worn And Wan, Never Thus Could Voyage On.

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

I Wish No Living Thing To Suffer Pain.

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.

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

Titles Are Tinsel, Power A Corrupter, Glorya Bubble, And Excessive Wealth A Libel On Its Possessor.

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

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.

It Were Much Better That A Sentient Being Should Never Have Existed, Than That It Should Have Existed Only To Endure Unmitigated Misery.

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.

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.

And Bid Them Love Each Other And Be Blest: And Leave The Troop Which Errs, And Which Reproves, And Come And Be My Guest, - For I Am Love's.

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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.

Persevere Even Though Hell And Destruction Should Yawn Beneath Your Feet.

To Hearts Which Near Each Other Move From Evening Close To Morning Light,the Night Is Good; Because, My Love,they Never Say Good-night.

The Great Secret Of Morals Is Love; Or A Going Out Of Our Nature, And An Identification Of Ourselves With The Beautiful Which Exists In Thought, Action, Or Person, Not Our Own. 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 Pleasure Of His Species Must Become His Own. The Great Instrument Of Moral Good Is The Imagination.

I Love Snow, Snow, And All The Forms Of Radiant Frost.

Had This Author [sir W Drummond Academical Questions, Chap. Iii.], Instead Of Inveighing Against The Guilt And Absurdity Of Atheism, Demonstrated Its Falsehood, His Conduct Would Have, Been More Suited To The Modesty Of The Skeptic And The Toleration Of The Philosopher.

No Man Has A Right To Disturb The Public Peace, By Personally Resisting The Execution Of A Law However Bad. He Ought To Acquiesce, Using At The Same Time The Utmost Powers Of His Reason, To Promote Its Repeal.

Thy Words Are Like A Cloud Of Winged Snakes.

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.

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

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

If We Reason, We Would Be Understood; If We Imagine, We Would That The Airy Children Of Our Brain Were Born Anew Within Another's; If We Feel, We Would That Another's Nerves Should Vibrate To Our Own, That The Beams Of Their Eyes Should Kindle At Once And Mix And Melt Into Our Own, That Lips Of Motionless Ice Should Not Reply To Lips Quivering And Burning With The Heart's Best Blood. This Is Love.

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

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

Music, When Soft Voices Die Vibrates In The Memory.

I Love Love -- Though He Has Wings, And Like Light Can Flee.

Lie Bills And Calculations Much Perplexed, With Steam-boats, Frigates, And Machinery Quaint Traced Over Them In Blue And Yellow Paint.

The Young Moon Has Fed Her Exhausted Horn With The Sunset's Fire.

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.

I Consider Poetry Very Subordinate To Moral And Political Science.

Kiss Me, So Long But As A Kiss May Last!

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.

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.

Peter Was Dull; He Was At First Dull; - Oh, So Dull - So Very Dull! Whether He Talked, Wrote, Or Rehearsed - Still With His Dulness Was He Cursed - Dull -beyond All Conception - Dull.

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

Where Is Perfection? Where I Cannot Reach.

I Have Made My Bed In Charnels And On Coffins, Where Black Death Keeps Record Of The Trophies Won

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, And Endurance, These Are The Seals Of That Most Firm Assurance Which Bars The Pit Over Destruction's Strength; And If, With Infirm Hand, Eternity, Mother Of Many Acts And Hours, Should Free The Serpent That Would Clasp Her With His Length; These Are The Spells By Which To Reassume An Empire O'er The Disentangled Doom.

Deep Truth Is Imageless.

We Rest; A Dream Has Power To Poison Sleep. We Rise; One Wand'ring 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!

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.

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

The More We Study The More We Discover Our Ignorance.

O'er Egypt's Land Of Memory Floods Are Level, And They Are Thine, O Nile! And Well Thou Knowest The Soul-sustaining Airs And Blasts Of Evil, And Fruits, And Poisons Spring Where'er Thou Flowest.

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

The Advocates Of Literal Interpretation Have Been The Most Efficacious Enemies Of Those Doctrines Whose Nature They Profess To Venerate.

Just A Tender Sense Of My Own Process, That Holds Something Of My Connection With The Divine.

A Single Word Even May Be A Spark Of Inextinguishable Thought

War Is The Statesman's Game, The Priest's Delight, The Lawyer's Jest, The Hired Assassin's Trade.

That Orbed Maiden, With White Fire Laden, Whom Mortals Call The Moon.

When Merciless Ambition, Or Mad Zeal, Has Led Two Hosts Of Dupes To Battlefield, That, Blind, They There May Dig Each Other's Graves, And Call The Sad Work Glory.

Soul Meets Soul On Lovers' Lips.

Worse Than A Bloody Hand Is A Hard Heart.

The Pale Stars Are Gone! For The Sun, Their Swift Shepherd, To Their Folds Them Compelling, In The Depths Of The Dawn, Hastes, In Meteor-eclipsing Array, And The Flee Beyond His Blue Dwelling, As Fawns Flee The Leopard.

Thou Shoreless Flood, Which In Thy Ebb And Flow Claspest The Limits Of Mortality.

I Love Tranquil Solitude And Such Society As Is Quiet, Wise, And Good.

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.

Nothing Wilts Faster Than Laurels That Have Been Rested Upon.

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

When My Cats Aren't Happy, I'm Not Happy. Not Because I Care About Their Mood But Because I Know They're Just Sitting There Thinking Up Ways To Get Even.

That Sweet Sleep Which Medicines All Pain.

I Have Drunken Deep Of Joy.

I Pant, I Sink, I Tremble, I Expire!

Love! Dearest, Sweetest Power! How Much Are We Indebted To Thee! How Much Superior Are Even Thy Miseries To The Pleasures Which Arise From Other Sources!

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

Love Withers Under Constraints: Its Very Essence Is Liberty: It Is Compatible Neither With Obedience, Jealousy, Nor Fear.

New Relationship

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.

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

The Soul's Joy Lies In Doing.

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

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.

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.

Know What It Is To Be A Child? It Is To Be Something Very Different From The Man Of Today. It Is To Have A Spirit Yet Streaming From The Waters Of Baptism; It Is To Believe In Belief; It Is To Be So Little That Elves Can Reach To Whisper In Your Ear; It Is To Turn Pumpkins Into Coaches, And Mice Into Horses, Lowness Into Loftiness, And Nothing Into Everything, For Each Child Had Its Fairy Godmother In Its Soul.

In The Infancy Of Society Every Author Is Necessarily A Poet

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.

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

Poets Are The Unacknowledged Legislators Of The World.

Gold Is A Living God And Rules In Scorn, All Earthly Things But Virtue.

Through The Sunset Of Hope, Like The Shapes Of A Dream, What Paradise Islands Of Glory Gleam!

The Breath Of Accusation Kills An Innocent Name, And Leaves For Lame Acquittal The Poor Life, Which Is A Mask Without It.

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

I Love All Waste And Solitary Places.

Their Errors Have Been Weighed And Found To Have Been Dust In The Balance; If Their Sins Were As Scarlet, They Are Now White As Snow: They Have Been Washed In The Blood Of The Mediator And The Redeemer, Time.

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

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.

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.

The Emptiness And Folly Of Retaliation Are Apparent From Every Example Which Can Be Brought Forward. Not Only Jesus Christ, But The Most Eminent Professors Of Every Sect Of Philosophy, Have Reasoned Against This Futile Superstition.

... A Wild Dissolving Bliss Over My Frame He Breathed, Approaching Near, And Bent His Eyes Of Kindling Tenderness Near Mine, And On My Lips Impressed A Lingering Kiss

Songs Consecrate To Truth And Liberty.

By All That Is Sacred In Our Hope For The Human Race, I Conjure Those Who Love Happiness And Truth To Give A Fair Trial To The Vegetable System!

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

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

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

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 It's Own Wreck The Thing It Contemplates; Neither To Change, Not 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

Near That A Dusty Paint-box, Some Odd Hooks, A Half-burnt Match, An Ivory Block, Three Books, Where Conic Sections, Spherics, Logarithms, To Great Laplace, From Saunderson And Sims, Lie Heaped In Their Harmonious Disarray Of Figures,-disentangle Them Who May.

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!

Strange Thoughts Beget Strange Deeds.

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

Less Oft Peace In Shelley's Mind, Than Calm In Waters Seen.

Sow Seed--but Let No Tyrant Reap; Find Wealth--let No Imposter Heap; Weave Robes--let Not The Idle Wear; Forge Arms--in Your Defence To Bear.

I Bring Fresh Showers For The Thirsting Flowers, From The Seas And The Streams; I Bear Light Shade For The Leaves When Laid In Their Noonday Dreams.

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

True Love In This Differs From Gold And Clay, That To Divide Is Not To Take Away. Love Is Like Understanding, That Grows Bright, Gazing On Many Truths.

Our Sweetest Songs Are Those That Tell Of Saddest Thought.

Man Has No Right To Kill His Brother. It Is No Excuse That He Does So In Uniform: He Only Adds The Infamy Of Servitude To The Crime Of Murder.

It Is Found Easier, By The Short-sighted Victims Of Disease, To Palliate Their Torments By Medicine, Than To Prevent Them By Regimen

So Soon As This Want Or Power [of Love] Is Dead, Man Becomes The Living Sepulchre Of Himself, And What Yet Survives Is The Mere Husk Of What Once He Was.

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.

It Is Our Will That Thus Enchains Us To Permitted Ill. We Might Be Otherwise, We Might Be All We Dream Of Happy, High, Majestical. Where Is The Love, Beauty And Truth We Seek, But In Our Mind? And If We Were Not Weak, Should We Be Less In Deed Than In Desire?

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

Men Of England, Wherefore Plough For The Lords Who Lay You Low?

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.

Rulers, Who Neither See, Nor Feel, Nor Know, But Leech-like To Their Fainting Country Cling, Till They Drop, Blind In Blood, Without A Blow, - A People Starved And Stabbed In The Untilled Field.

There Is A Harmony In Autumn, And A Luster In Its Sky...

I Have Been A Wanderer Among Distant Fields. I Have Sailed Down Mighty Rivers.

To Be Omnipotent But Friendless Is To Reign.

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.

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

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.

Mankind, Transmitting From Generation To Generation The Legacy Of Accumulated Vengeances, And Pursuing With The Feelings Of Duty The Misery Of Their Fellow-beings, Have Not Failed To Attribute To The Universal Cause A Character Analogous With Their Own. The Image Of This Invisible, Mysterious Being Is More Or Less Excellent And Perfect Resembles More Or Less Its Original In Proportion To The Perfection Of The Mind On Which It Is Impressed.

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

One Nightingale In An Interfluous Wood Satiate The Hungry Dark With Melody.

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

The Cloud Of Mind Is Discharging Its Collected Lightning.

Words Are But Holy As The Deeds They Cover.

Nought May Endure But Mutability.

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.

Poetry Is A Mirror Which Makes Beautiful That Which Is Distorted.

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

The Great Secret Of Morals Is Love; Or A Going Out Of Our Own Nature, And An Identification Of Ourselves With The Beautiful Which Exists In Thought, Action, Or Person, Not Our Own.

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.

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

Self Improvement

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.

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.

How Wonderful Is Death! Death And His Brother Sleep.

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

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

I Love Tranquil Solitude.

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.

The Babe Is At Peace Within The Womb, The Corpse Is At Rest Within The Tomb. We Begin In What We End.

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

Teas, Where Small Talk Dies In Agonies.

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.

Of Planets, Struggling Fierce Towards Heaven's Free Wilderness.

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

For Love And Beauty And Delight, There Is No Death Nor Change.

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.

The Practice Of Utter Sincerity Towards Other Men Would Avail To No Good End, If They Were Incapable Of Practising It Towards Their Own Minds. In Fact, Truth Cannot Be Communicated Until It Is Perceived.

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.

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.

True Love In This Differs From Gold And Clay, That To Divide Is Not To Take Away. Love Is Like Understanding, That Grows Bright, Gazing On Many Truths; 'tis Like Thy Light, Imagination! Which From Earth And Sky, And From The Depths Of Human Phantasy, As From A Thousand Prisms And Mirrors, Fills The Universe With Glorious Beams, And Kills Error, The Worm, With Many A Sun-like Arrow Of Its Reverberated Lightning.

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

No More Let Life Divide What Death Can Join Together.

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

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.

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

This Lake Exceeds Anything I Ever Beheld In Beauty.

Christianity Indeed Has Equaled Judaism In The Atrocities, And Exceeded It In The Extent Of Its Desolation. Eleven Millions Of Men, Women, And Children Have Been Killed In Battle, Butchered In Their Sleep, Burned To Death At Public Festivals Of Sacrifice, Poisoned, Tortured, Assassinated, And Pillaged In The Spirit Of The Religion Of Peace, And For The Glory Of The Most Merciful God.

Man Is Of Soul And Body, Formed For Deeds Of High Resolve; On Fancy's Boldest Wing.

But Hope Will Make Thee Young, For Hope And Youth Are Children Of One Mother, Even Love.

Let There Be Light! Said Liberty , And Like Sunrise From The Sea, Athens Arose!

Concerning God, Freewill And Destiny: Of All That Earth Has Been Or Yet May Be, All That Vain Men Imagine Or Believe, Or Hope Can Paint Or Suffering May Achieve, We Descanted.

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.

I Love Tranquil Solitude, And Such Society As Is Quiet, Wise, And Good; Between Thee And Me What Difference? But Thou Dost Possess The Things I Seek, Not Love Them Less.

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John Drinkwater

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