Lyric Poem · Love
Lines to a Critic
Honey from silkworms who can gather,
Or silk from the yellow bee?
The grass may grow in winter weather
As soon as hate in me.
Hate men who cant, and men who pray,
And men who rail like thee;
An equal passion to repay
They are not coy like me.
Or seek some slave of power and gold
To be thy dear heart's mate;
Thy love will move that bigot cold
Sooner than me, thy hate.
A passion like the one I prove
Cannot divided be;
I hate thy want of truth and love —
How should I then hate thee?
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Lines to a Critic” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — quilloak.com/poems/lines-to-a-critic
Quick facts
- Poem
- Lines to a Critic
- Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Length
- 16 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Love, Nature, Winter
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 16 lines · 4 quatrains
- Line length
- Consistent with common metre. Alternating eight- and six-syllable lines — the hymn stanza (8.6.8.6), the most-used quatrain in English verse.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
- Source record
- PoetryDBLines to a Critic by percy-bysshe-shelley, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 005ffa19497b38d9…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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