Percy Bysshe Shelley - Light Quotes

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Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light,The night is good; because, my love,They never say good-night.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
'tis He, arrayed In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon....

Percy Bysshe Shelley
… they who wore
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light,
Signs of thought's empire over thought —their lore
Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mystery within.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled by its deformity to screen
With flimsy veil of justice and of right
Its unattractive lineaments that scare
All save the brood of ignorance; at once
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness;
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead —
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;
A traveler from the cradle to the grave Through the dim light of this immortal day.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness;
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God;
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert with certainty that we do or do not live after death.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human phantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot meet again.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments — Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
I stood within the city disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passng through the streets;
and heard the Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
A lovely lady, garmented in light
From her own beauty.

Percy Bysshe Shelley