What is heaven? a globe of dew, Filling in the morning new Some eyed flower, whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world: Constellated suns unshaken, ODE TO THE WEST WIND.* I. 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, * This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset, with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it. 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 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 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 Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear! 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, As thus with thee in prayer in 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 ; And, by the incantation of this verse, mankind! Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, AN EXHORTATION. CAMELEONS feed on light and air: Poets' food is love and fame : Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever change their hue Twenty times a-day? Poets are on this cold earth, That poets range. Yet dare not stain with wealth or power If bright cameleons should devour |