The voices / 151 fragments

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1792 AD — 1822 AD

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

Author and source reference ↗

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Historical source references

The Revolt of Islam
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Adonais
Ode to the West Wind
The Cloud
To a Skylark
Hellas
Written on hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon
Prometheus Unbound
Julian and Maddalo
Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples
Peter Bell the Third
The Witch of Atlas
Music, when soft Voices die
Rarely, rarely comest Thou
To Jane
One Word is too often profaned
Translation of Calderon's Magico Prodigioso
Queen Mab
A Defence of Poetry
Poetry · anthology attribution: Shelley
Religion · anthology attribution: Shelley
Printed citation: Shelley
Page 73 · printed citation: Shelley (Adonaïs, an Elegy on Keats, XL)
Page 85 · printed citation: Shelley (Prometheus Unbound)
Page 114 · printed citation: Shelley (Adonaïs XXXIX)
Page 209 · printed citation: Shelley (Prometheus Unbound, III, 3)
Page 210 · printed citation: Shelley (The Cloud)
Page 211 · printed citation: Shelley
Page 214 · printed citation: Shelley (A Defence of Poetry)

Archive entries

01c. 1807 AD

You lie—under a mistake, For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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02c. 1807 AD

How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother Sleep.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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03c. 1807 AD

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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04c. 1807 AD

Heaven's ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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05c. 1807 AD

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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06Undated

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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07Undated

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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08Undated

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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09Undated

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore and called it gold.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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10Undated

Fear not that tyrants shall rule for ever, / Or the priests of the bloody faith; / They stand on the brink of that mighty river / Whose waves they have tainted with death.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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11Undated

Fear not the future; weep not for the past.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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12Undated

From kings and priests and statesmen war arose, / Whose safety is man's deep embittered woe, / Whose grandeur his debasement.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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13Undated

History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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14Undated

How vainly seek / The selfish for that happiness denied / To aught but virtue!

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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15Undated

In just and equal measure all is weighed; / One scale contains the sum of human weal, / And one, the good man's heart.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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16Undated

Religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude.... How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image, should she look into the mirror of Nature!

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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17Undated

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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18Undated

The awful shadow of some unseen Power / Floats, though unseen, among us.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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19Undated

Those of us who are worth anything spend our manhood in unlearning the follies or expiating the mistakes of our youth.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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20Undated

We look before and after, / And pine for what is not; / E'en our sincerest laughter / With some pain is fraught; / Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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21Undated

When the power of imparting joy / Is equal to the will, the human soul / Requires no other heaven.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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22Undated

Worse than despair, / Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope; / It is the only ill which can find place / Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour / Tottering beneath us.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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23Undated

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world’s slow stain. He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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24Undated

Behold the Nereïds under the green sea, Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream, Their white arms lifted o’er their streaming hair With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, Hastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Archive entries

Read further

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Tao Te Ching

The Prophet