ODE TO THE WEST WIND. I. O, WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill Wild Spirit, which art moving every where ; II. Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 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 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 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 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere III. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers All overgrown with azure moss and flowers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, IV. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; The impulse of thy strength, only less free The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. V. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, AN ODE, [WRITTEN, OCTOBER, 1819, BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY.] ARISE, arise, arise! There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread; Be your wounds like eyes To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they ; Awaken, awaken, awaken! The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes; Be the cold chains shaken To the dust where your kindred repose, repose: Their bones in the grave will start and move, When they hear the voices of those they love, Most loud in the holy combat above. Wave, wave high the banner! When Freedom is riding to conquest by: Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh. |