Historical Literature on Humanity Against Cruelty to Animals, Timeline of Animal Rights History

Animal Rights History »» Percy Bysshe Shelley

1813 | Queen Mab, A Philosophical Poem

How strange is human pride!
I tell thee that those living things,
To whom the fragile blade of grass,
That springeth in the morn
Is an unbounded world;
I tell thee that those viewless beings,
Whose mansion is the smallest particle
Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel, and live like man;
That their affections and antipathies,
And perisheth ere noon,
Like his, produce the Laws
And the minutest throb
That through their frame diffuses
Ruling their moral state;
The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable
As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.
(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab [1813])

No longer now,
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,
And horribly devours his mangled flesh,
Which, still avenging nature's broken law,
Kindled all putrid humours in his frame,
All evil passions, and all vain belief,
Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind,
The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.
No longer now the winged habitants,
That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,
Flee from the form of man; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the hands
Which little children stretch in friendly sport
Towards these dreadless partners of their play.
All things are void of terror: man has lost
His terrible prerogative, and stands
An equal amidst equals: happiness
And science dawn though late, upon the earth;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extends
Their all-subduing energies, and wield
The sceptre of a vast dominion there;
Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends
Its force to the omnipotence of mind,
Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth
To decorate its paradise of peace.
(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab [1813])

1813 | A Vindication of a Natural Diet: Being One of a Series of Notes to Queen Mab, A Philosophical Poem

Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous animals in everything, and carnivorous in nothing; he had neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre.…After every subterfuge of gluttony, the bull must be degraded into the ox, and the ram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication of digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instinct of nature that would rise in judgement against it, and say, Nature formed me for such work as this. Then. and only, would he be consistent. (Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Vindication of a Natural Diet [1813])

I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, the ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and passionate moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He will embrace a pure system, from its abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity, and its promise of wide-extened benefit: unless custom has turned poison into food, he will hate the brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct; it will be a contemplation full of horror and disappointment to his mind, that beings capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs and last convulsions of dying animals. (Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Vindication of a Natural Diet[1813])

1815 | Alastor; or The Spirit of Solitude

EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood!
If our great Mother have imbued my soul?
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dwy morn, and odorous noo, and even,
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
If autumn's hollow sighs in the wood,
And winter robing with pure snow and crowns
Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;
If spring's voluptuous paintings when she breathes
Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
I consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred:—then forgive
This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw
No portion of your wonted favour now!
(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude [1815])

1817-8 | Revolt of Islam

My breathern, we are free! the fruits are glowing
Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing
O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming—
Never again may the blood of bird or beast
Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,
To the pure skies in accusation steaming;
Avenging poisons shall have ceased
To feed disease and fear and madness,
The dwellers of the earh and air
Shall throng aroung our steps in gladness,
Seeking their food or refuge there—
Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull,
To make this earth, our home more beautiful,
And Science, and her sister Posey,
Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!
(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Revolt of Islam [1817-8])

On the Vegetable System of Diet [posthumously published]

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1813 | Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab, A Philosophical Poemwith Notes [1st ed. London, 1813] (New York, 1831; Digitized by Google, 2007).

1813 | Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Vindication of a Natural Diet: Being One of a Series of Notes to Queen Mab, A Philosophical Poem [Privately published in 1813 as Notes to Queen Mab, First Seperate Edition of Vindication published later that same year. Reprinted as an appendix to the American medical work, the 'Manual on Health' by Dr. Turnbull, (New York, 1835) see Prefatory Notice] (London, 1884).

1815 | Percy Bysshe Shelly, Alastor; or The Spirit of Solitude in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (London, 1849).

1817-1818 | Percy Bysshe Shelly, The Revolt of Islam, [Originally entitled Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century and first published in 1817, although only a few copies were issued] in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (London, 1849).

1929 [posthumously published] | Percy Bysshe Shelley, On the Vegetable System of Diet, [posthumously published] Edition of 12 copies privately published in 1929, Also published in 1940; Printed for the Vegetarian Society in 1947, reprints available).

1883 | Howard Williams, "Percy Bysshe Shelley," in Ethics of Diet [1st London & Manchester, 1883] 2nd ed. (London & Manchester, 1896; Online at Animal Rights History, 2006-2008).

1890 | William E. A. Axon, Shelley's Vegetarianism ([First Editon: New York, 1890, Fascimile Reprint:] New York, 1971).

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