Ozymandias"I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich 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 decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.
We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,The path of its departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability!
Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.
And I have fitted up some chambers thereLooking towards the golden Eastern air,And level with the living winds, which flowLike waves above the living waves below.—I have sent books and music there, and allThose instruments with which high spirits callThe future from its cradle, and the pastOut of its grave, and make the present lastIn thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,Folded within their own eternity.
Sonnet: Political GreatnessNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,History is but the shadow of their shame,Art veils her glass, or from the pageant startsAs to oblivion their blind millions fleet,Staining that Heaven with obscene imageryOf their own likeness. What are numbers knitBy force or custom? Man who man would be,Must rule the empire of himself; in itMust be supreme, establishing his throneOn vanquished will, quelling the anarchyOf hopes and fears, being himself alone.
You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.
If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?
Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.
At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart?
Alas! this is not what I thought life was.I knew that there were crimes and evil men,Misery and hate; nor did I hope to passUntouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.In mine own heart I saw as in a glassThe hearts of others ... And whenI went among my kind, with triple brassOf calm endurance my weak breast I armed,To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!
Sorrow (A Song)To me this world's a dreary blank,All hopes in life are gone and fled,My high strung energies are sank,And all my blissful hopes lie dead.--The world once smiling to my view, Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy;The world I then but little knew,Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;All then was jocund, all was gay,No thought beyond the present hour,I danced in pleasure’s fading ray,Fading alas! as drooping flower.Nor do the heedless in the throng,One thought beyond the morrow give,They court the feast, the dance, the song, Nor think how short their time to live.The heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace,What earthly comfort can console,It drags a dull and lengthened pace,'Till friendly death its woes enroll.--The sunken cheek, the humid eyes,E’en better than the tongue can tell;In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,Where memory's rankling traces dwell.--The rising tear, the stifled sigh, A mind but ill at ease display,Like blackening clouds in stormy sky,Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.Thus when souls' energy is dead,When sorrow dims each earthly view, When every fairy hope is fled,We bid ungrateful world adieu.
Before we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is necessary that we possess those advantages which we have been cheated of, and which the experience of modern times has proved that nations even under the present conditions are susceptible.
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
We look before and after, And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.Yet if we could scornHate, and pride, and fear;If we were things bornNot to shed a tear,I know not how thy joy we everShould come near.