Percy Bysshe Shelley

Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.

Throng through the human universe, aspire!Thou consummation of all mortal hope!Thou glorious prize of blindly working will,Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,Verge to one point and blend forever there!Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-placeWhere care and sorrow, impotence and crime,Languor, disease and ignorance dare not come!O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!‘Genius has seen…

Chasing the clouds that roll in wrath behind,And tightening the soul’s laxest nerves to steel;True mountain Liberty alone may healThe pain which Custom’s obduracies bring,And he who dares in fancy even to stealOne draught from Snowdon’s ever sacred springBlots out the unholiest rede of worldly witnessing.And shall that soul, to selfish peace resigned,So soon forget…

Palace-roof of cloudless nights!Paradise of golden lights!Deep, immeasurable, vast,Which art now, and which wert thenOf the Present and the Past,Of the eternal Where and When,Presence-chamber, temple, home,Ever-canopying dome,Of acts and ages yet to come!Glorious shapes have life in thee,Earth, and all earth’s company;Living globes which ever throngThy deep chasms and wildernesses;And green worlds that glide…

Or the mariner, worn and wan,Never thus could voyage on –Day and night, and night and day,Drifting on his dreary way,With the solid darkness blackClosing round his vessel’s track:Whilst above the sunless sky,Big with clouds, hangs heavily,And behind the tempest fleetHurries on with lightning feet,He is ever drifted onO’er the unreposing waveTo the haven of…

A Spirit of activity and life,That knows no term, cessation, or decay;That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,Extinguish’d in the dampness of the grave,Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babeIn the dim newness of its being feelsThe impulses of sublunary things,And all is wonder to unpractis’d sense:But, active, steadfast and eternal, stillGuides…

Death is busy everywhere,All around, within, beneath,Above is death—and we are death.II.Death has set his mark and sealOn all we are and all we feel,On all we know and all we fear,…III.First our pleasures die—and thenOur hopes, and then our fears—and whenThese are dead, the debt is due,Dust claims dust—and we die too.IV.All things that…

Wandering companionlessAmong the stars that have a different birth,–And ever changing, like a joyless eyeThat finds no object worth its constancy?

Misery and hate; nor did I hope to passUntouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.In mine own heart I saw as in a glassThe hearts of others … And whenI went among my kind, with triple brassOf calm endurance my weak breast I armed,To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful mass!

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,Who chariotest to their dark wintry bedThe winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blowHer clarion o’er…