Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822 / 2008-06-28 00:00:00
EBOOK, A DEFENCE OF POETRY AND OTHER ESSAYS ***
Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
A DEFENCE OF POETRY AND OTHER ESSAYS
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
ON LOVE
ON LIFE IN A FUTURE STATE
ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH SPECULATIONS
ON METAPHYSICS SPECULATIONS
ON MORALS ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS
ON THE SYMPOSIUM, OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO
A DEFENCE OF POETRY
ON LOVE
What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? ask him who adores,
what is God?
I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even thine,
whom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they
resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought
to appeal to something in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to
them, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant
and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for
experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and
to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn.
With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble
through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy and have
found only repulse and disappointment.
Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards
all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we
find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void,
and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we
experience within ourselves.
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