percy bysshe shelley

A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

First published 1840 · edited by Mary Shelley
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contents

i
On Love
What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? ask him who adores, what is God?
ii
On Life
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the…
iii
On a Future State
It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death,—that…
iv
On the Punishment of Death
The first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose and support, at the approach of a period of great political change, is the abolition…
v
Speculations on Metaphysics
It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think of nothing which we have not perceived. When I say that we can think of nothing, I…
vi
Speculations on Morals
That great science which regards nature and the operations of the human mind, is popularly divided into Morals and Metaphysics. The latter…
vii
Essay on the Literature, the Arts, and the Manners of the Athenians
The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death of Aristotle, is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself, or with…
viii
On the Symposium, or Preface to the Banquet of Plato
The dialogue entitled The Banquet was selected by the translator as the most beautiful and perfect among all the works of Plato.1 He…
ix
A Defence of Poetry
According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be…