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 On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night 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 Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baia'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 ; The impulse of thy strength, only less free I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision : I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need! O! 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 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, Y Percy Bysshe Shelley. 382 THE CLOUD I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers I bear light shade for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,— Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the genii that move Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings; And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, That orbéd maiden with white fire laden, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, And I laugh to see them whirl and flee Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl. Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch, through which I march When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water And the nursling of the sky. I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores: For after the rain when, with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 383 ASTRE A REDUX THE world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, And loves, and weeps, and dies; O, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be ! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free, Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew! Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, And leave, if naught so bright may live, Saturn and Love their long repose |