| 610. Ode to the West Wind |
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 | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| (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! | |
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| Of some fierce Mænad, 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, | 25 |
| Vaulted with all thy congregated might | |
| Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere | |
| Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear! | |
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams | |
| The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, | 30 |
| Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams, | |
| Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, | |
| And saw in sleep old palaces and towers | |
| Quivering within the wave's intenser day, | |
| All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, | |
| And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear! | |
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 | 45 |
| 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 | 50 |
| Scarce seem'd 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 chain'd and bow'd | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, | |
| My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! | |
| Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, | |
| Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth; | |
| And, by the incantation of this verse, | 65 |
| Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth | |
| Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! | |
| Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth | |
| The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, | |
| If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? | 70 |