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 ? |
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