Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes


Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears! Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore, Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea?


Citations

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Time." Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mary Shelley, John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824, p. 209.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Born: August 4, 1792
  • Died: July 8, 1822
  • Nationality: English
  • Profession: Poet

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem." A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats.