Percy Bysshe Shelley Poems

A collection of select Percy Bysshe Shelley famous poems that were written by Percy Bysshe Shelley or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.

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Asia: From Prometheus Unbound

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean,...Read more of this...

The Waning Moon

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass....Read more of this...

Hymn of Pan

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
FROM the forests and highlands 
We come we come; 
From the river-girt islands  
Where loud waves are dumb  
Listening to my sweet pipings. 5 
The wind in the reeds and the rushes  
The bees on the bells of thyme  
The birds on the myrtle bushes  
The cicale above in the lime  
And the lizards...Read more of this...

The Moon

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,

Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, 
Out of her chamber, led by the insane 
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, 
The mood arose up in the murky east, 5 
A white and shapeless mass. 

II
Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, 
Wandering companionless 
Among the...Read more of this...

Time

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?...Read more of this...

One word is too often profaned

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ONE word is too often profaned 
For me to profane it  
One feeling too falsely disdain'd 
For thee to disdain it. 
One hope is too like despair 5 
For prudence to smother  
And pity from thee more dear 
Than that from another. 

I can give not what men call love; 
But wilt thou accept not 10 
The worship...Read more of this...

To Coleridge

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Oh! there are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees:
Such lovely ministers to meet
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,
Thou dost hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee, but they
Cast,...Read more of this...

Lines to an Indian Air

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I ARISE from dreams of thee 
In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low 
And the stars are shining bright¡ª 
I arise from dreams of thee, 5 
And a spirit in my feet 
Hath led me¡ªwho knows how? 
To thy chamber-window, Sweet! 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream; 10 
The...Read more of this...

The Two Spirits: An Allegory

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 FIRST SPIRIT
O thou, who plum'd with strong desire 
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire--
Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there--
Night is coming!SECOND SPIRIT
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night,
Within my heart is the lamp of...Read more of this...

Hymn To Intellectual Beauty

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us, -- visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, --
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening, --
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, --
Like memory of music fled,...Read more of this...

To the Night

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
SWIFTLY walk over the western wave  
Spirit of Night! 
Out of the misty eastern cave 
Where all the long and lone daylight  
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear 5 
Which make thee terrible and dear ¡ª 
Swift be thy flight! 

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray  
Star-inwrought; 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day...Read more of this...

The Poets Dream

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ON a Poet's lips I slept  
Dreaming like a love-adept 
In the sound his breathing kept; 
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses  
But feeds on the aerial kisses 5 
Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. 
He will watch from dawn to gloom 
The lake-reflected sun illume 
The blue bees in the ivy-bloom  
Nor heed nor see...Read more of this...

Archys Song from Charles the First

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Heigho! the lark and the owl! 
One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
Sings like the fool through darkness and light.

"A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.

"There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in...Read more of this...

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I rode one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but...Read more of this...

Ode to the West Wind

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being¡ª 
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!¡ªO thou 5 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
The wing¨¨d seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave,...Read more of this...

An Exhortation

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Chameleons feed on light and air: 
Poets' food is love and fame: 
If in this wide world of care 
Poets could but find the same 
With as little toil as they, 
Would they ever change their hue 
As the light chameleons do, 
Suiting it to every ray 
Twenty times a day? 

Poets are on this cold earth, 
As chameleons...Read more of this...

Written among the Euganean Hills North Italy

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
MANY a green isle needs must be 
In the deep wide sea of Misery, 
Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
Never thus could voyage on 
Day and night, and night and day, 5 
Drifting on his dreary way, 
With the solid darkness black 
Closing round his vessel's track; 
Whilst above, the sunless sky 
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 10 
And...Read more of this...

Love's Philosophy

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps...Read more of this...

Lines

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
WHEN the lamp is shatter'd  
The light in the dust lies dead; 
When the cloud is scatter'd  
The rainbow's glory is shed; 
When the lute is broken 5 
Sweet tones are remember'd not 
When the lips have spoken  
Loved accents are soon forgot. 

As music and splendour 
Survive not the lamp and the lute 10 
The heart's...Read more of this...

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I
The everlasting universe of things 
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods...Read more of this...

From the Arabic an Imitation

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 MY faint spirit was sitting in the light 
 Of thy looks, my love; 
 It panted for thee like the hind at noon 
 For the brooks, my love. 
Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight, 
 Bore thee far from me; 
 My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, 
 Did companion thee. 

Ah!...Read more of this...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Edgar Lee Masters
 My father who owned the wagon-shop
And grew rich shoeing horses
Sent me to the University of Montreal.
I learned nothing and returned home,
Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler,
Hunting quail and snipe.
At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my gun
Caught in the side of the boat
And a great hole was shot through my heart.
Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft,
On which...Read more of this...

To a Skylark

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! 
Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher 
From the earth thou springest, 
Like a cloud of fire 
The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning 
Of the sunken sun, 
O'er...Read more of this...

To The Men Of England

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of...Read more of this...

To the Moon

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ART thou pale for weariness 
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth  
Wandering companionless 
Among the stars that have a different birth —
And ever-changing like a joyless eye 
That finds no object worth its constancy? ...Read more of this...

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