Tao Te Ching
Triumph of Life
Shelley’s early and accidental drowning death while sailing left his last poem, The Triumph of Life, unfinished and ending with “Of… “ And so ironically, his “triumph of life” ended with his death at only 29 years old. More explicitly however (as edited by his widow, Mary Shelley), it may have finished this deep meditation on the meaning of life and our place in it with a message much stronger and enlivening than any words he could have found to finish. Our translating and editing of this great work attest to another triumph of this life Shelley portrays and evokes.
Quotes from Triumph of Life
“All what is mortal of great Plato there
And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
That star that ruled his doom was far too fair—
Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not”
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“From every form the beauty slowly waned
From every firmest limb and fairest face
The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace
Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
”
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“I feared, loved, suffered did, and died…
If I have been extinguished, yet there arise
A thousand beacons from the spark I bore
The great, the unforgotten: they who wore
Signs of thought’s empire over thought; their lore”
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“Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senate house and prison and theater
When Freedom left those who upon the free
Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.”
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“Like day she came, making the night a dream
To move, as one between desire and shame
Thou comest from the realm without a name.”
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“Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air…
Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair
Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to new bright destruction come and go”
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“Of Caesar’s crime from him to Constantine
And Gregory and John and men divine
Spread the plague of blood and gold abroad,
Who rose like shadows between Man and god”
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“Of people there was hurrying to and fro
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why”
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“Old men and women foully disarrayed
Shake their gray hair in the insulting wind.
Their work and to the dust whence they arose
And frost in these performs what fire in those.”
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