SONNET: ENGLAND IN 1819. AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, - But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,— A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, — Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield: 1819. 5 Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see VIII. With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, Trace your grave, and build your tomb, 1819. 25 30 .. 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; 5 IO II. Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 15 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 Thou dirge 20 Of the dying year, to which this closing night Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O, hear! 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 Baia's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 25 30 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 35 Cleave themselves into chasms, while 'tar below Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, IV. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free 40 45 The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 50 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 V. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 55 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 60 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, 65 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 1819. |