Percy Bysshe Shelley

English In 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring, Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like

Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici

She left me at the silent time When the moon had ceas’d to climb The azure path of Heaven’s steep, And like an albatross asleep, Balanc’d on her wings of light, Hover’d in the

The Two Spirits: An Allegory

FIRST SPIRIT O thou, who plum’d with strong desire Wouldst float above the earth, beware! A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire Night is coming! Bright are the regions of the air, And among

Night

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

Mutability

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly! – yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: Or

When The Lamp Is Shattered

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

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

The Invitation

Best and brightest, come away, Fairer far than this fair day, Which, like thee, to those in sorrow Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough year just awake In its cradle on

Queen Mab: Part VI (excerpts)

“Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus’d A Spirit of activity and life, That knows no term, cessation, or decay; That fades not when the

Epipsychidion (excerpt)

Emily, A ship is floating in the harbour now, A wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow; There is a path on the sea’s azure floor, No keel has ever plough’d that path before;

The Triumph of Life

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. The smokeless altars

To A Skylark

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. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest

Feelings Of A Republican On The Fall Of Bonaparte

I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it

Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue

ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child. SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como. HELEN Come hither, my sweet Rosalind. ‘T is long since thou and I have met; And yet methinks it were unkind

To The Men Of England

Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear? Wherefore feed and clothe and save, From the cradle to

The Waning Moon

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose

One Word Is Too Often Profaned

One word is too often profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it; One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother; And pity from

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

I The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark now glittering now reflecting gloom Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought

A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day: Silence and Twilight,

To A Lady, With A Guitar

Ariel to Miranda: Take This slave of music, for the sake Of him who is the slave of thee; And teach it all the harmony In which thou canst, and only thou, Make the

Remorse

AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon, Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even: Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights

Mont Blanc

(Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni) 1 The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark – now glittering – now reflecting gloom – Now lending

Good-Night

Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite; Let us remain together still, Then it will be good night. How can I call the lone night good, Though thy

Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills

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 – Day and night, and night and day, Drifting

Poetical Essay

Extract from Poetical Essay by Percy Bysshe Shelley Millions to fight compell’d, to fight or die In mangled heaps on War’s red altar lie. . . When the legal murders swell the lists of

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heap’d from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious

An Exhortation

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame: If in this wide world of care Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever

To Coleridge

Oh! there are spirits of the air, And genii of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair As star-beams among twilight trees: Such lovely ministers to meet Oft hast thou turned

Time

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

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats

I weep for Adonais he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn

From the Arabic, an Imitation

MY faint spirit was sitting in the light Of thy looks, my love; It panted for thee like the hind at noon For the brooks, my love. Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest’s

Hymn Of Pan

FROM the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on

From "Adonais," 49-52

49 Go thou to Rome, at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of

Stanzas Written In Dejection Near Naples

The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent might, The breath of the moist air is light,

I Arise From Dreams Of Thee

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

Music, When Soft Voices Die

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved’s bed; And

The Question

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 waters murmuring Along a shelving bank

Time Long Past

Like the ghost of a dear friend dead Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last,

Song: Rarely, rarely, comest thou

Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day ‘Tis since thou are fled away. How shall ever one

On A Dead Violet

The odor from the flower is gone Which like thy kisses breathed on me; The color from the flower is flown Which glowed of thee and only thee! A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, It

On Death

The pale, the cold, and the moony smile Which the meteor beam of a starless night Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, Ere the dawning of morn’s undoubted light, Is the flame of

Hellas

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.

To Wordsworth

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common

Hymn To Intellectual Beauty

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats through 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

Asia: From Prometheus Unbound

My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside a helm conducting it, Whilst

One sung of thee who left the tale untold

One sung of thee who left the tale untold, Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting; Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold, Which mock the lips with air, when they

The Indian Serenade

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

Song

Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day ‘Tis since thou art fled away. How shall ever one

To Jane

The keen stars were twinkling, And the fair moon was rising among them, Dear Jane. The guitar was tinkling, But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again. As the moon’s soft

Chorus from Hellas

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 faith and empires gleam, Like a wrecks of a dissolving

And like a Dying Lady, Lean and Pale

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp’d in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose

Lines

WHEN the lamp is shatter’d, The light in the dust lies dead; When the cloud is scatter’d, The rainbow’s glory is shed; When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remember’d not When the

Autumn: A Dirge

The warm sun is falling, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves

The Cloud

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. From my wings are shaken the dews

To Night

Swiftly walk over 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

The Witch Of Atlas

Before those cruel twins whom at one birth Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth All those bright natures which adorned its prime, And left us

Archy's Song from Charles the First

Heigho! the lark and the owl! One flies the morning, and one lulls the night: Only the nightingale, poor fond soul, Sings like the fool through darkness and light. “A widow bird sate mourning

Bereavement

How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner As he bends in still grief o’er the hallowed bier, As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner, And drops to perfection’s remembrance

Prometheus Unbound: Act I (excerpt)

SCENE. A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione areseated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks. Prometheus. Monarch

Love's Philosophy

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

Adonais

I weep for Adonais – he is dead! O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To

A Widow Bird Sate Mourning For Her Love

A widow bird sate mourning for her Love Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the

A Lament

O World! O Life! O Time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more – Oh, never more!

The Fitful Alternations Of The Rain

The fitful alternations of the rain, When the chill wind, languid as with pain Of its own heavy moisture, here and there Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere

Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live

Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread, behind, lurk Fear And Hope,

Ode To The West Wind

I 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,

Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude

Earth, Ocean, Air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon,

Song Of Proserpine

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth, Thou from whose immortal bosom Gods and men and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. If

Invocation

Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day ‘Tis since thou art fled away. How shall ever one

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,