The Narrative Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 1

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Chatto & Windus, 1927
 

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Page 131 - I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep : a fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why: until there rose From the near school-room, voices, that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes — The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
Page 132 - Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain, How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young wisdom...
Page 75 - Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. ' The...
Page 76 - E^RTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood ! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers...
Page 334 - That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom An epitaph of glory for the tomb Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made, Great People!
Page 131 - I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannise Without reproach or check.
Page 284 - Disguise it not' — we have one human heart — All mortal thoughts confess a common home : Blush not for what may to thyself impart Stains of inevitable crime: the doom Is this, which has, or may, or must become Thine, and all humankind's. Ye are the spoil Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb, Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual coil.
Page 85 - Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight O'er the wide aery wilderness: thus driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, Startling with careless step the moonlight snake, He fled.
Page 74 - The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion.
Page 99 - Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine And torrent, were not all ; — one silent nook Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, It overlooked in its serenity The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars. lt was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile Even in the lap of horror.

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