Date: 1820

"Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim, / Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse / Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse; / Till thine Infinity shall be / A robe of envenomed agony; / And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain, / To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne / In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer, / And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane, / Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, / Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, / As light in the sun, throned."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one, / Like animal life, and though we can obscure not / The soul which burns within, that we will dwell / Beside it, like a vain loud multitude / Vexing the self-content of wisest men."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Yet am I king over myself, and rule / The torturing and conflicting throngs within, / As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan / Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart / Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep, / And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Hypocrisy and custom make their minds / The fanes of many a worship, now outworn."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Ah woe! / Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever! / I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear / Thy works within my woe-illumèd mind, / Thou subtle tyrant!"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"To cheer thy state / I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits, / Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, / And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, / Its world-surrounding aether."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)