The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2
1914
The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2
1914
Percy Bysshe Shelley was twenty-nine years old when he drowned in a sailing accident off the coast of Italy. In his brief life, he wrote some of the most radical, beautiful, and terrifying poetry in the English language. This volume gathers his major long works: 'Queen Mab,' a visionary tour through a future where humanity has transcended war and suffering; 'The Cenci,' a ferocious tragedy about a family destroyed by a monstrous father; 'Alastor,' the haunting story of a young poet who dissolves into his own dreams; and 'Prometheus Unbound,' his masterpiece, a lyrical drama about the triumph of hope over tyranny. Shelley believed poetry could remake the world. He was expelled from Oxford for publishing an atheist pamphlet. His wife drowned herself in a river, and his verses were burned in the streets of London. Yet his faith in love, in imagination, in the possibility of human goodness never wavered. These poems pulse with that faith, with a lyricism so intense it still feels dangerous, with a beauty that aches. Two centuries later, Shelley remains the poet for anyone who believes the world should be otherwise.
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“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“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 heap'd for the belovèd's bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“And the Spring arose on the garden fair,Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breastRose from the dreams of its wintry rest.””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,The path of its departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability!””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the beloved's bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“And, like a dying lady lean and pale,Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,Out of her chamber, led by the insaneAnd feeble wanderings of her fading brain,The moon arose up in the murky eastA white and shapeless mass.Art thou pale for wearinessOf climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,Wandering companionlessAmong the stars that have a different birth,And ever changing, like a joyless eyeThat finds no object worth its constancy?””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;Custards for supper, and an endless hostOf syllabubs and jellies and mincepies,And other such ladylike luxuries.””
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
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