Lifts still its solemn voice :-but thou art fled- Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, (1815.) STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES. I. The sun is warm, the sky is clear, Like many a voice of one delight, II. I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown. The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion,— How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion ! IIL Alas! I have nor hope nor health, And walked with inward glory crowned; Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ;To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 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 Of the dying year, to which this closing night 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 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; 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.) |