Happy Birthday, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Born 4 August 1792, died 8 July 1822:
- Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
- Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
- What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.
- Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
- A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.
- The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
- Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
- Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.
- War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.
- All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.
Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. He was a member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

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Published by R.M. ENGELHARDT POET AUTHOR WRITER
R.M. Engelhardt is a poet, writer and author who over the last two decades has published over 16 books of poetry including "Nod" "Logos" "Alchemy" & "The Last Cigarette: The Collected Poems of R.M. Engelhardt. The founder of the Upstate NY organization Albany Poets & the Annual Poetry Celebration The Albany Word Fest he has through his ideas & visions helped to contribute a large amount of advocacy and creativity to the Spoken Word~Poetry Capital District scene and is the former host of the long running readings Vox, Propaganda, Listen & currently is creating a new resurrection of one of the area's most well known open mics for poetry and spoken word THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT in Troy, NY held on the last Wednesday evening of each month at the incredible nightclub/speak easy bar THE BERLIN IN TROY NY. His writing has also been published by many journals such as The Rye Whiskey Review, Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Sure! The Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Thunder Sandwich, The Hobo Camp Review, Full of Crow, on the Outlaw Poetry Network & in many many others.
Look for his books "WHERE THE PEOPLE'S VISION PERISHES 2020" "DARK LANDS (2019 on LuLu, Amazon & At Barnes and Noble) The Resurrection Waltz, 2012 ( Infinity Press) & "COFFEE ASS BLUES & OTHER POEMS" ( 2018 Alien Buddha Press 2018) " DarkLands" 2019 & "Where There Is No Vision" 2020 and his new books, "WE RISE LIKE SMOKE" (2021) & Of Spirit, Ash & Bone (2022) all available on Amazon.com
He is also the Editor of the small independent poetry press DeadMansPressInk.
www.gentlemanoutsider.com
*All Poems, Writings & Information Contained On This Blog Are The Property & Owned By The Author R.M. Engelhardt. © 2021
www.rmengelhardt.com
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