| 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,
|
| Yellow, and black,
and pale, and hectic red, |
| Pestilence-stricken multitudes ! O thou |
Who chariotest to
their dark wintry bed
|
| The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold
and low, |
| 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
odours plain and hill ;
|
| Wild Spirit, which art moving
everywhere ; |
Destroyer and preserver ; hear, O hear
!
|
| 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 Maenad, 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
|
| Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere |
Black rain, and fire, and hail with
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 Baiae’s bay, |
| And saw in sleep old palaces and towers |
Quivering within the
wave’s intenser day,
|
| All overgrown with azure moss, and
flowers |
| So sweet, the sense
faints picturing them ! Thou |
For whose path the Atlantic’s level
powers
|
| 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 : O
hear !
|
| IV |
| If I were a dead leaf thou mightest
bear ; |
| If I were a swift
cloud to fly 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
|
| 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 |
One too like thee―tameless,
and swift, and proud.
|
| V |
| 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, |
| 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, as from an
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
behind ?
|
| Percy
Bysshe Shelley |
Classic Poems
|
| |
|
[ Ode to a Skylark ] [ Ode to the West Wind ] [ Ozymandias ] [ The Mask of Anarchy ] |
