Adonais
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Top 10 Best Quotes
“No more let life divide what death can join together.”
“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”
“The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.”
“And in a mad trance Strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings We decay Like corpses in a charnel Fear & Grief Convulse is & consume us Day by day And cold hopes swarm Like worms within Our living clay”
“And others came... Desires and Adorations, Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies, Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies; And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.”
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass Stains the white radiance of Eternity”
“Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep; For he is gone, where all things wise and fair Descend—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep Will yet restore him to the vital air; Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.”
“All he had loved, and moulded into thought, From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, Lamented Adonais. Morning sought Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day; Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.”
“He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own;”
“The leprous corpse, touch’d by this spirit tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour Is chang’d to fragrance, they illumine death And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath; Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consum’d before the sheath By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows A moment, then is quench’d in a most cold repose.”
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Book Keywords:
schiltz, elegy, death, cemetery, john-keats, shelley, adonais, splendors-and-glooms, poem, morbid, fave-quote-ever
