Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fall'n on you:
Ye are many - they are few

Bye for now...

Briggy

Love Shelley

The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whatever it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley--
--"Queen Mab"--

My favorites are 'Prometheus Unbound' and ;Hymn to Apollo'

The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,--
Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

II.
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

III.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night.

IV.
I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,
With their ethereal colors; the Moon's globe,
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers,
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine,
Are portions of one power, which is mine.

V.
I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven;
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle?

VI.
I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows it is divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine, is mine,
All light of art or nature; - to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2010 04:56PM by bona dea.

Good stuff.

Although I'm more for Wordsworth Coleridge and Keats, Shelley had his moments, especially in Prometheus Unbound. I remember the part when Asia is asking Demogorgon a series of questions and Demogorgon keeps answering variations of "God, all mighty God." And then the famous line, "But a voice is wanting, the deep truth is imageless." This puts in mind Laotse:

Man has the Earth for image,
The Earth has the Sky for image,
The Sky has Significance for image,
And Significance has itself for image.

--Laotse--


Prometheus Unbound is long and difficult, and I wonder if I'm capable of reading it well anymore. The Shelley I still turn to is kind of an earlier companion to Prometheus Unbound. The ending of Alastor sticks with me, especially where it echoes Wordsworth. A bit:


...Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe too 'deep for tears,' when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind....


Human, with intimations of immortality...

Human Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Good stuff.
>
> Although I'm more for Wordsworth Coleridge and
> Keats, Shelley had his moments, especially in
> Prometheus Unbound. I remember the part when Asia
> is asking Demogorgon a series of questions and
> Demogorgon keeps answering variations of "God, all
> mighty God." And then the famous line, "But a
> voice is wanting, the deep truth is imageless."
> This puts in mind Laotse:
>
> Man has the Earth for image,
> The Earth has the Sky for image,
> The Sky has Significance for image,
> And Significance has itself for image.
>
> --Laotse--
>
>
> Prometheus Unbound is long and difficult, and I
> wonder if I'm capable of reading it well anymore.
> The Shelley I still turn to is kind of an earlier
> companion to Prometheus Unbound. The ending of
> Alastor sticks with me, especially where it echoes
> Wordsworth. A bit:
>
>
> ...Art and eloquence,
> And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain
> To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
> It is a woe too 'deep for tears,' when all
> Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
> Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
> Those who remain behind....
>
>
> Human, with intimations of immortality...

I have always been fascinated by Greek mythology and the Prometheus legend was a favorite. Prometheus Unbound was difficult the first time I read it but I found some good passages. I liked his comments on Christ and Christians too. I am paraphrasing but Prometheus sees Jesus crucified and then he sees 'the mighty and the just, whom thy slaves persecute for being like to thee'. Good stuff.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

On a battle-trumpet's blast
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
'Mid the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant's banner torn,
Gathering round me, onward borne,
There was mingled many a cry--
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky;
And one sound above, around,
One sound beneath, around, above,
Was moving; 't was the soul of love;
'T was the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee

From Prometheus Unbound