The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 40
He lives, he wakes,—’tis Death is dead, not he.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 41
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 43
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.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 52
A widow bird sat mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
‘Charles the First’ (1822) sc. 5, l. 9
That orbéd maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon.
‘The Cloud’ (1819)
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.
‘The Cloud’ (1819)
How wonderful is Death,