Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) |
Ode to the West Wind |
I [1] O [2]WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being |
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Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead | |
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, | |
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, | |
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou | 5 |
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed | |
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, | |
Each like a corpse within its grave, until | |
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow[3] | |
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill | 10 |
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) | |
With living[4] hues and odours plain and hill; | |
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; | |
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear![5] | |
II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, |
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Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, | |
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, | |
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread | |
On the blue surface of thine airy surge, | |
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head | 20 |
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge | |
Of the horizon to the zenith's height, | |
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge | |
Of the dying year, to which this closing night | |
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, | 25 |
Vaulted with all thy congregated might | |
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere | |
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear![6] | |
III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams |
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The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, | 30 |
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams, | |
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, | |
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers | |
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, | |
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers | 35 |
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou | |
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers | |
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below | |
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear | |
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know | 40 |
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, | |
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear[7]! | |
IV If I[8] were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; |
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If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; | |
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share | 45 |
The impulse of thy strength, only less free | |
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even | |
I were as in my boyhood, and could be | |
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, | |
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed | 50 |
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven | |
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. | |
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud![9] | |
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! | |
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd | 55 |
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.[10] | |
V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: |
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What if my leaves are falling like its own? | |
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies[11] | |
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, | 60 |
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, | |
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! | |
Drive my[12] dead thoughts over the universe, [13] | |
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth; | |
And, by the incantation of this verse, | 65 |
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth | |
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! | |
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth[14] | |
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, | |
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?[15] | 70 |
Footnotes