Beautiful Captive

Famous quotes containing the words beautiful and/or captive:

    The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.”
    Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

    There a captive sat in chains
    Crooning ditties treasured well
    From his Afric’s torrid plains.
    Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
    Hapless sire to hapless son,—
    Was the wailing song he breathed,
    And his chain when life was done.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)