IV. Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear,Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.. V. Some might lament that I were cold, They might lament-for I am one Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. ODE TO THE WEST WIND. I. (December, 1818.) O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 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 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill; Wild Spirit which art moving everywhere; 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 On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge 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, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh 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 Baiæ's bay, 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; I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 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, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, (1819.) FROM 'PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.' Semichorus I. of Spirits (as Asia and Panthea pass into the forest). The path through which that lovely twain Is curtained out from heaven's wide blue. Nor aught save where some cloud of dew, Or, when some star, of many a one That climbs and wanders through steep night, Has found the cleft through which alone Ere it is borne away, away, By the swift heavens that cannot stay,- Like lines of rain that ne'er unite: And the gloom divine is all around, Semichorus II. There the voluptuous nightingales Are awake through all the broad noonday. When one with bliss or sadness fails, And through the windless ivy-boughs, Sick with sweet love, droops dying away Watching to catch the languid close The song, and all the woods are mute; Like many a lake-surrounded flute, Sounds overflow the listener's brain So sweet that joy is almost pain. [From the same.] VOICE in the air, singing. Life of Life! thy lips enkindle With their love the breath between them; Make the cold air fire, then screen them Child of Light! thy limbs are burning Through the vest which seems to hide them, As the radiant lines of morning Through the clouds, ere they divide them; And this atmosphere divinest Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. Fair are others; none beholds thee (But thy voice sounds low and tender," Like the fairest), for it folds thee From the sight-that liquid splendour; Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest, (1820.) |