When hearts have one mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest,
For your cradle, your home, and your bier.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. When the Lamp Is Shattered (l. 17-24). . . The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley, ed. (1994) The Modern Library/Random House.)

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. Adonais (Fr. XLV). . . The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley, ed. (1994) The Modern Library/Random House.)

Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. The earth, in Prometheus Unbound, act 3, sc. 3 (1820). In 1818, two years before the publication of this work, Shelley started an untitled sonnet, "Lift not the painted veil which those who live/Call Life ......")

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. The earth, in Prometheus Unbound, act 4, l. 403 (1820).)

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.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. Adonais (Fr. LII). . . The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley, ed. (1994) The Modern Library/Random House.)

He hath awakened from the dream of life?

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. Adonais (Fr. XXXIX). . . The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley, ed. (1994) The Modern Library/Random House.)

Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. The Indian Serenade (l. 17-19). . . The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley, ed. (1994) The Modern Library/Random House.)

Yes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. Letter, May 2, 1811. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 1, ed. Frederick L. Jones (1964). To the same correspondent (Thomas Jefferson Hogg), June 21, 1811, Shelley called matrimony "... the most horrible of all the means which the world has had recourse to bind the noble to itself," but justified his own marriage in a letter to Hogg on Oct. 8 of that year on the grounds that, until considerable improvement of morals had been brought about, it would be advisable to maintain the institution of matrimony.)

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. Song to the Men of England, st. 1 (written 1819). Opening lines.)

A story of particular facts is a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which it distorts.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840).)