Percy Bysshe Shelley

“ Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside—till I found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed, on that passion. ”

“ Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness, ⁠475
Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen ⁠480
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices.—
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know: ⁠485
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods ”

“ In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea. ⁠25
The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree,
While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast
Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed.
The intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven
Have shattered its mast, and it stands black, and riven. ⁠30
The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk
On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,
Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold
Its corruption around it. ”

“ Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. ”

“ I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war; cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me, like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. ”

“ Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun; 65
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit 70
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,—
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower ”

“ TO HARRIET
[Composed May, 1814. Published (from the Esdaile MSS.) by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887.]
Thy look of love has power to calm
⁠The stormiest passion of my soul;
Thy gentle words are drops of balm
⁠In life's too bitter bowl;
No grief is mine, but that alone⁠5
These choicest blessings I have known.
Harriet! if all who long to live
⁠In the warm sunshine of thine eye,
That price beyond all pain must give,—
⁠Beneath thy scorn to die;⁠10
Then hear thy chosen own too late
His heart most worthy of thy hate. ”

“ Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit ⁠530
Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. ⁠535
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,
The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. ”

“ To defecate life of its misery and its evil was the ruling passion of his soul; he dedicated to it every power of his mind, every pulsation of his heart. He looked on political freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of mankind; and thus any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and an exultation more intense and wild than he could have felt for any personal advantage. Those who have never experienced the workings of passion on general and unselfish subjects cannot understand this ”

“ If England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. ”

“ I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some of the most imperfect among them; but I frankly own that I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel secure that the lovers of Shelley’s poetry (who know how, more than any poet of the present day, every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank me: I consecrate this volume to them. ”

“ And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.
Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?
Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires 570
Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou,
Have shone upon the paths of men—return,
Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou
Art destined an eternal war to wage
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 575
The germs of misery from the human heart. ”

“ Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
She had no companion of mortal race,
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
Told, whilst the morn [4] kissed the sleep from her eyes, 15
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:
As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. 20
Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed ”

“ Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,5
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,—10
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
II
Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost [2] shine upon
Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone?15
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? ”

“ No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain ”

“ Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, ⁠105
Between Ocean and Heaven, like an ocean, passed,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world
Which, based on the sea and to Heaven upcurled,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, ⁠110
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast ”

“ 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.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 5
Like the Spirit of Love felt [1] everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 10
Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant. ”

“ A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others; and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected, and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. ”

“ Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgement-throne
Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!
Oh. that the words which make the thoughts obscure
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew 235
From a white lake blot Heaven's blue portraiture,
Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
Till in the nakedness of false and true
They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due! 240
XVII
He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
Can be between the cradle and the grave
Crowned him the King of Life. ”

“ XXXI.
⁠In the world’s youth his empire was as firm
⁠As its foundations—Soon the Spirit of Good,
⁠Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm,
⁠Sprang from the billows of the formless flood,
⁠Which shrank and fled; and with that fiend of blood
⁠Renewed the doubtful war—thrones then first shook,
⁠And earth’s immense and trampled multitude
⁠In hope on their own powers began to look,
And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook. ”

“ Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains.
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease: 580
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
When fenced by power and master of the world.
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, 585
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. ”

“ Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.—Byron
I
A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations: Liberty
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into [1] the sky,
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,
And in the rapid plumes of song
Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering inverse [2] o'er its accustomed prey ”

“ The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight
To wander in the shadow of the night. 520
lx
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind,
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined 525
With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep. ”

“ Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
⁠Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.
Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
⁠Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;⁠10
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
⁠And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.
The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:
⁠The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:
But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,
⁠Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet. ”

“ And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck. ⁠65
No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair
Than Heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.
She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee;
It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder ⁠70
Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near. ”

“ XXXIX.
⁠When first the living blood through all these veins
⁠Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth,
⁠And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains
⁠Which bind in woe the nations of the earth.
⁠I saw, and started from my cottage hearth;
⁠And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness
⁠Shriek’d, till they caught immeasurable mirth—
⁠And laugh’d in light and music: soon, sweet madness
Was pour’d upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness. ”

“ From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,
When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high,
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.360
xl
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, 365
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain. ”

“ Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.
The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew, 80
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore
As blood to a heart that will beat no more. ”

“ The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to Revenge, or Envy, or Prejudice. ”

“ FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE POEM TO WILLIAM SHELLEY
[Published in Dr. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, 1862.]
I
The world is now our dwelling-place;
Where'er the earth one fading trace
⁠Of what was great and free does keep,
That is our home!...
Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race⁠5
⁠Shall our contented exile reap;
For who that in some happy place
His own free thoughts can freely chase
By woods and waves can clothe his face
⁠In cynic smiles? Child! ”

“ Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the contemporary condition of them: one great poet is a masterpiece of nature which another not only ought to study but must study. ”