The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) act 4, l. 570
That sweet bondage which is freedom’s self.
‘Queen Mab’ (1813) canto 9, l. 76
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of water’s murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightst in dream.
‘The Question’
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets.
‘The Question’
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may.
‘The Question’
With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
‘The Revolt of Islam’ (1818) canto 5, st. 23
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew.
‘The Sensitive Plant’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 1
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
‘The Sensitive Plant’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 29
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows.
‘The Sensitive Plant’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 37
Rarely, rarely, comest thou,