Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelleywas one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric, as well as epic, poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 August 1792
lying thinking men
For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.
knives losing fine
His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.
song learning men
Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
cities heaven london
Hell is a city much like London A populous and smoky city
wise solitude loner
I love tranquil solitude And such society As is quiet, wise, and good.
daughter ocean sky
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.
stars kings world
Kings are like stars,-they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.
marriage choices vices
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.
leadership society reign
To be omnipotent but friendless is to reign.
wise spring flower
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.
country blow blood
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...
age musician philosopher
Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age.
sea green voyages
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.
writing criticism would-be
If certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!