Fragrance Quote
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that odours, “when sweet violets sicken, / Live within the sense they quicken.”
In the Poet’s Words
“Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Music, when soft voices die” (written 1821; published 1824 in Posthumous Poems)
Essential Details
Shelley on Odours and Memory at a Glance
- Speaker: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
- Source: “Music, when soft voices die,” published 1824
- Status: Public domain
- Theme: Fading scent and memory
Why the Quote Resonates
Shelley sets music and scent side by side as things that outlast their source. Violets fade, rose petals are kept for a bed, and the feeling remains. It is a short poem that explains why dried flowers and old scents are kept.
Fading and Staying
The poem works because the scent is gone and yet “lives within the sense.” Read how Shakespeare used violets for the same effect and how Proust turned it into prose. For the long history of flowers in perfume, see The History of Perfume.
Why it matters
A scent does not need to be present to be remembered, which is the poem’s whole argument.
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