STANZAS OZYMANDIAS (1817) WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES (1818) I 5 I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said: – "Two fast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold com mand, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these life less things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: My is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” The sun is warm, the sky is clear, tude's. II 10 name 10 I see the Deep's untrampled floor light dissolved in star-showers, thrown; I sit upon the sands alone – The lightning of the noontide ocean Is Aashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. 15 LINES TO A CRITIC (1817) III ENGLAND IN 1819 (1819) a An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, — mud from muddy spring; Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, 5 Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow; A people starved and stabbed in the un tilled field; An army, which liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield; Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; 10 Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed; A Senate — Time's worst statute unre pealed : Are graves, from which a glorious Phan tom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. 45 LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY (1819) The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; All things by a law divine Why not I with thine ? And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me? 10 10 move A splendor among shadows, a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene, a spirit that strove For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. 15 ODE TO THE WEST WIND (1819) Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! I III O wild West Wind, thou breath of Au tumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, A Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou, 5 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 신 Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) / With living hues and odors plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving every where, Destroyer and preserver, - hear! oh hear! 35 10 II 15 45 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to Ay with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share ; The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be 13 The comrade of thy 'wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed Scarce seemed a vision: I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! 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. 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 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might 50 20 55 25 V 10 are Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 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 dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, from unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far be hind? 15 Whilst me, who am thyfoe, eyeless in hate Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, O’er mine own misery and thy vain re venge. Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, And moments aye divided by keen pangs Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, Scorn and despair, -- these mine empire: More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill typanny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling moun tain, Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured, with out herb, Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! alas! pain, pain ever, for ever! 65 -as an 20 70 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND (1818-19) Act FIRST SCENE: A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered bound to the Precipice. PanTHEA and Ione are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks. Prometheus. Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all spirits But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds Which Thou and I alone of living things Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope; 5 The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains Eat with their burning cold into my bones; Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips His beak in poison not his own, tears up 35 My heart; and shapeless sights come wan dering by, |