Monday, November 10, 2014

Ode to the West Wind

 

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
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,
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 everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
 
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 aery 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 sepulcher,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
 
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
 
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: oh, hear!
 
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to paint 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.
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.
 
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?
 
BIO: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) attended Oxford but was expelled for circulating his pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism.  He married Harriet Westbrook in Scotland, where he was heavily influenced by William Godwin. He became intimate with Godwin's daughter, Mary, and married her after Harriet committed suicide. They moved to Italy, where he met Lord Byron and wrote the bulk of his works.  In 1822, he drowned in the Bay of Spezia near Livorno.