Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
Here Shelley is aware of the human dissatisfaction—a dissatisfaction that many people feel when reading his poetry—with a life that is too full of mirages and metamorphoses.
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It is the confession of the ineffectual angel, who had sung:
Poets are on this cold earth,