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And many an ante-natal tomb
When butterflies dream of the life to come.
Topic: Butterflies
Source: Sensitive Plant
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I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
Topic: Clouds
Source: The Cloud
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Far clouds of feathery gold,
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
Like islands on a dark blue sea.
Topic: Clouds
Source: Queen Mab (bk. II)
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The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
Topic: Desire
Source: To---- One Word is too Often Profaned.
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No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
Topic: Despair
Source: Prometheus Unbound (act I, l. 24)
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. . . then black despair
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone.
Topic: Despair
Source: Revolt of Islam--Dedication (st. 6)
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Around, around in ceaseless circles wheeling
With clangs of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed
Incessantly.
Topic: Eagles
Source: Revolt of Islam (canto I, st. 10)
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Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such ladylike luxuries.
Topic: Eating
Source: Letter to Maria Gisborne
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Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief.
Topic: Echo
Source: Adonais (st. 15)
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Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Topic: Eternity
Source: Adonais (LII)
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The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow.
Topic: Eternity
Source: Adonais (XXX)
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Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
Topic: Familiarity
Source: None
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Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.
Topic: Generosity
Source: None
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Like a glowworm golden, in a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden its aerial blue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.
Topic: Glowworms
Source: To a Skylark
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Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
The signet of its all-enslaving power
Upon a shining ore, and called it gold;
Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,
And with blind feelings reverence the power
That grinds them to the dust of misery.
But in the temple of their hireling hearts
Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn
All earthly things but virtue.
Topic: Gold
Source: Queen Mab (pt. V, st. 4)
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You must come home with me and be my guest;
You will give joy to me, and I will do
All that is in my power to honour you.
Topic: Guests
Source: Hymn to Mercury (st. 5)
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History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
Topic: History
Source: None
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O, white innocence,
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide
Thine awful and serenest countenance
From those who know thee not!
Topic: Innocence
Source: The Cenci (act V, sc. 3, l. 24)
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Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide Agony.
Topic: Islands
Source: Lines written among the Euganean Hills (l. 66)
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There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
Topic: Labor
Source: None
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Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skilled to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Topic: Larks
Source: To a Skylark (st. 20)
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Hail to thee blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Topic: Larks
Source: To a Skylark (st. 20)
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And the wand-like lily which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky.
Topic: Lilies
Source: The Sensitive Plant (pt. I)
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Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awaken from the dream of life!
Topic: Peace
Source: None
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The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Topic: Plagiarism
Source: Song--To Men of England
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Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
Topic: Poetry
Source: None
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I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
Topic: Rain
Source: The Cloud
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Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
Topic: Revenge
Source: None
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Kings are like stars--they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.
Topic: Royalty
Source: Hellas--Mahmud to Hassan (l. 195)
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In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of
bitterns, when St. Paul and Westminster Abbey shall stand
shapeless and nameless ruins in the midst of an unpeopled marsh,
when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of
islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their
broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic
commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now
unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells
and the Fudges and their historians.
Topic: Ruin
Source: Dedication to Peter Bell the Third
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We look before and after,
And pine for what is not,
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Topic: Sadness
Source: To a Skylark (st. 18)
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January grey is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps--but, O ye hours!
Follow with May's fairest flowers.
Topic: Seasons
Source: Dirge for the Year (st. 4)
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All of us, who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
Topic: Self-improvement
Source: None
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Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.
Topic: Singing
Source: To Jane--The Keen Stars were Twinkling
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Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world.
Topic: Sky
Source: Queen Mab (pt. IV)
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There is a snake in thy smile, my dear,
And bitter poison within thy tear.
Topic: Smiles
Source: Beatrice Cenci
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Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.
Topic: Songs
Source: To Wordsworth (l. 12)
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The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
Topic: Study
Source: None
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Peter was dull; he was at first
Dull;--Oh, so dull--so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed--
Still with his dulness was he cursed--
Dull--beyond all conception--dull.
Topic: Stupidity
Source: Peter Bell the Third (pt. VII, XI)
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It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to
open it and remove all doubt.
Topic: Stupidity
Source: Peter Bell the Third (pt. VII, XI)
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Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
Topic: Stupidity
Source: Peter Bell the Third (pt. VII, XI)
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For there are deeds
Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
Topic: Suffering
Source: The Cenci (act III, sc. 1)
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Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
The work of their own hearts, and that must be
Our chastisement or recompense.
Topic: Suffering
Source: Julian and Maddalo (l. 494)
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Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
Topic: War
Source: None
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'Twas his ambition, generous and great
A life to life's great end to consecrate.
Topic: Washington, George
Source: Washington
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How many a rustic Milton has passed by,
Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
In unremitting drudgery and care!
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled
His energies, no longer tameless then,
To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!
Topic: Work
Source: Queen Mad (pt. V, st. 9)
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