Queen Mab, a Philosophical Poem, with Notes Quotes

“How wonderful is Death, Death, and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon With lips of lurid blue; The other, rosy as the morn When throned on ocean’s wave It blushes o'er the world; Yet both so passing wonderful!”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“War is the statesman’s game,”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony and love. The universe, In Nature’s silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy, - All but the outcast, Man.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“the chariot’s way Lay through the midst of an immense concave Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite color, And semicircled with a belt Flashing incessant meteors.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“Far, far below the chariot’s path, Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous Ocean lay. The mirror of its stillness showed The pale and waning stars, The chariot’s fiery track, And the gray light of morn Tinging those fleecy clouds That canopied the dawn.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous Ocean lay. The mirror of its stillness showed The pale and waning stars,”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“The life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable Priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business;--the other can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab, a Philosophical Poem, with Notes

“O Spirit! fearlessly bear on. Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower, That blooms in mossy bank and darksome glens, Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“birth but wakes the spirit to the sense Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape New modes of passion to its frame may lend; Life is its state of action, and the store Of all events is aggregated there That variegate the eternal universe; Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“every shape and mode of matter lends Its force to the omnipotence of mind, Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth To decorate its paradise of peace.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“All things are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life. The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, Rewarding her with their pure perfectness; The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues and diffuse them all abroad; Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits and mantles on the stream; No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the ever-verdant trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint and blushes into love.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other’s hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er 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

“There ‘s not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; Nor the minutest drop of rain, That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, But flowed in human veins;”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“Seemed it that the chariot’s way Lay through the midst of an immense concave Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite color, And semicircled with a belt Flashing incessant meteors.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab

“silent those sweet lips, Once breathing eloquence That might have soothed a tiger’s rage Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab