Epigram 4. - Circumstance.

FROM THE GREEK.

A man who was about to hang himself,
Finding a purse, then threw away his rope;
The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf,
The halter found; and used it. So is Hope
Changed for Despair - one laid upon the shelf,
We take the other. Under Heaven's high cope
Fortune is God - all you endure and do
Depends on circumstance as much as you.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language. Born on August 4, 1792, Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, and his own wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. His poetic themes mainly explored radical social reform, personal liberation, and the power of human creativity and imagination. Tragically, he died young at the age of 29 in a boating accident in 1822. Though he faced criticism during his lifetime, his work garnered acclaim posthumously.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fragment: Apostrophe To Silence.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

Homer's Hymn To The Earth: Mother Of All.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

To Mary Shelley.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

Lines.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Despair. Song.

Ask not the pallid stranger's woe,
With beating heart and throbbing breast,
Whose step is faltering, weak, and slow,
As though the body needed rest. -

Whose 'wildered eye no object meets,
Nor cares to ken a friendly glance,
With silent grief his bosom beats, -
Now fixed, as in a deathlike trance.

Who looks around with fearful eye,
And shuns all converse with man kind,
As though some one his griefs might spy,
And soothe them with a kindred mind.

A friend or foe to him the same,
He looks on each with equal eye;
The difference lies but in the name,
To none for comfort can he fly. -

'Twas deep despair, and sorrow's trace,
To him too keenly given,
Whose memory, time could not efface -
His peace was lodged in Heaven. -

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Song. Hope.

And said I that all hope was fled,
That sorrow and despair were mine,
That each enthusiast wish was dead,
Had sank beneath pale Misery's shrine. -

Seest thou the sunbeam's yellow glow,
That robes with liquid streams of light;
Yon distant Mountain's craggy brow.
And shows the rocks so fair, - so bright -

Tis thus sweet expectation's ray,
In softer view shows distant hours,
And portrays each succeeding day,
As dressed in fairer, brighter flowers, -

The vermeil tinted flowers that blossom;
Are frozen but to bud anew,
Then sweet deceiver calm my bosom,
Although thy visions be not true, -

Yet true they are, - and I'll believe,
Thy whisperings soft of love and peace,
God never made thee to deceive,
'Tis sin that bade thy empire...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Circumstance

Talk not to me of souls that do conceive
    Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate
    And bound by circumstances, sit desolate,
And long for heights they never can achieve.

It is not so.    That which we most desire,
    With understanding, we at last obtain,
    In part or whole.    I hold there is no rain,
No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.

Show me thy labour, I straightway will name
    The nature of thy thoughts.    Who bends the bow,
    And lets the arrow from the strained string go,
Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim.

We build our ships from timbers of the brain;
    With products of the soul we load the hold;
    Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold,
Or if they spring a leak upon the main?

T...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sonnet. To Hope.

How droops the wretch whom adverse fates pursue,
While sad experience, from his aching sight
Sweeps the fair prospects of unproved delight,
Which flattering friends and flattering fancies drew.
When want assails his solitary shed,
When dire distraction's horrent eye-ball glares,
Seen 'midst the myriad of tumultuous cares,
That shower their shafts on his devoted head.
Then, ere despair usurp his vanquish'd heart,
Is there a power, whose influence benign
Can bid his head in pillow'd peace recline,
And from his breast withdraw the barbed dart?
There is--sweet Hope! misfortune rests on thee--
Unswerving anchor of humanity!

Thomas Gent

Epigram. Auri Sacra Fames.

I knew a being once, his peaked head
With a few lank and greasy hairs was spread;
His visage blue, in length was like your own
Seen in the convex of a table-spoon.
His mouth, or rather gash athwart his face,
To stop at either ear had just the grace,
A hideous rift: his teeth were all canine,
And just like Death's (in Milton) was his grin.
One shilling, and one fourteen-penny leg,
(This shorter was than that, and not so big),
He had; and they, when meeting at his knees,
An angle formed of ninety-eight degrees.
Nature, in scheming how his back to vary,
A hint had taken from the dromedary:
His eyes an inward, screwing vision threw,
Striving each other through his nose to view.

His intellect was just one ray above
The idiot Cymon's ere he fell in love.<...

Thomas Gent

Epigram 3. - Spirit Of Plato.

FROM THE GREEK.

Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb?
To what sublime and star-ypaven home
Floatest thou? -
I am the image of swift Plato's spirit,
Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit
His corpse below.

Percy Bysshe Shelley