Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley — Read

‘Thus do the generations of the earth / Go to the grave, and issue from the womb, / Surviving still the imperishable change / That renovates the world; even as the leaves / Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year / Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped / For many seasons there-though long they choke, / Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, / All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees / From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, / Lie level with the earth to moulder there, / They fertilize the land they long deformed, / Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs / Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, / Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. / Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights / The fairest feelings of the opening heart, / Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil / Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, / And judgement cease to wage unnatural war / With passion's unsubduable array. / Twin-sister of religion, selfishness! / Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all / The wanton horrors of her bloody play; / Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, / Shunning the light, and owning not its name, / Compelled, by its deformity, to screen, / With flimsy veil of justice and of right, / Its unattractive lineaments, that scare / All, save the brood of ignorance: at once / The cause and the effect of tyranny; / Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile; / Dead to all love but of its abjectness, / With heart impassive by more noble powers / Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; / Despising its own miserable being, / Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall.

‘Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange / Of all that human art or nature yield; / Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, / And natural kindness hasten to supply / From the full fountain of its boundless love, / For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. / Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade / No solitary virtue dares to spring, / But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand / Scatter their withering curses, and unfold / The doors of premature and violent death, / To pining famine and full-fed disease, / To all that shares the lot of human life, / Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain, / That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.