Percy Bysshe Shelley

A dream has power to poison sleep.

Senseless is the breast and cold _x000D_ _x000D_ Which relenting love would fold;_x000D_ _x000D_ Bloodless are the veins and chill _x000D_ _x000D_ Which the pulse of pain did fill; _x000D_ _x000D_ Every little living nerve _x000D_ _x000D_ That from bitter words did swerve _x000D_ _x000D_ Round the tortur'd lips and brow, _x000D_ _x000D_ Are like sapless leaflets now _x000D_ _x000D_ Frozen upon December's bough.

A sensitive plant in a garden grew,_x000D_ _x000D_ And the young winds fed it with silver dew,_x000D_ _x000D_ And it opened its fan_x000D_ _x000D_ like leaves to the light,_x000D_ _x000D_ and closed them beneath the kisses of night.

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. For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone. But grief returns with the revolving year.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

How wonderful is death! Death and his brother sleep.

At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God's own heart?

And priests dare babble of a God of peace, _x000D_ _x000D_ Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, _x000D_ _x000D_ Murdering the while, uprooting every germ _x000D_ _x000D_ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, _x000D_ _x000D_ Making the earth a slaughter - house!

I arise from dreams of thee_x000D_ _x000D_ In the first sweet sleep of night,_x000D_ _x000D_ when the winds are breathing low,_x000D_ _x000D_ and the stars are shining bright.

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.

But hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth_x000D_ _x000D_ Are children of one mother, even Love.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow

I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers.

Worse than despair,_x000D_ _x000D_ Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope.

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.

It is among men of genius and science that atheism alone is found.

I love tranquil solitude_x000D_ _x000D_ And such society_x000D_ _x000D_ As is quiet, wise, and good.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.