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Percy Shelley
(4 Aug 1792 - 8 Jul 1822)
English who was significant in the development of English romantic poetry, despite a life cut short at the young age of 29 (in a sea storm that sank the boat in which he was sailing).
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Science Quotes by Percy Shelley (6 quotes)
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs,—
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress
Its music.
To the wild wood and the downs,—
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress
Its music.
— Percy Shelley
Poem, 'The Invitation' (1822), collected in The Poetical Works (1844), 306.
I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
— Percy Shelley
The Cloud (1820). In K. Raine (ed.), Shelley (1974), 289.
The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven’s bright isles,
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles!
That wandering shrine of soft, yet icy flame,
Which ever is transformed yet still the same,
And warms, but not illumines.
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles!
That wandering shrine of soft, yet icy flame,
Which ever is transformed yet still the same,
And warms, but not illumines.
— Percy Shelley
In Epipsychidion (1821), 16.
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.
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 Shelley
Adonais (1821), St. 52. In K. Raine (ed.), Shelley (1974), 209.
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
— Percy Shelley
From Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts (1820), Act 2, Scene 3, 78.
The unquiet republic of the maze
Of Planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.
Of Planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.
— Percy Shelley
Prometheus Unbound (1820). In Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (1979, 1986), 240.
Quotes by others about Percy Shelley (1)
Now if we want poets to interpret physical science as Milton and Shelley did (Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up-to-date in their chemical knowledge), we must see that our possible poets are instructed, as their masters were, in science and economics.
In Daedalus or Science and the Future (1924). Reprinted in Haldane's Daedalus Revisited (1995), 31.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
