To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThis is Heaven, when pain and evil cease, and when the Benignant Principle, untrammelled and uncontrolled, visits in the fulness of its power the universal frame of things.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyAnd on the pedestal these words appear:โจ 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:โจ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' โจNothing beside remains. Round the decayโจ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bareโจ The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity.
Percy Bysshe Shelley