I
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being |
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| Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead |
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| Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, |
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| Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, |
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| Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou |
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| Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed |
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| The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, |
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| Each like a corpse within its grave, until |
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| Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow |
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| Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill |
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| (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) |
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| With living hues and odours plain and hill; |
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| Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; |
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| Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear! |
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II
Thou on whose
stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, |
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| Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are
shed, |
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| Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, |
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| Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread |
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| On the blue surface of thine airy surge, |
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| Like the bright hair uplifted from the head |
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| Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge |
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| Of the horizon to the zenith's height, |
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| The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge |
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| Of the dying year, to which this closing night |
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| Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, |
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| Vaulted with all thy congregated might |
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| Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere |
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| Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear! |
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III
Thou who didst
waken from his summer dreams |
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| The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, |
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| Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams, |
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| Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, |
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| And saw in sleep old palaces and towers |
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| Quivering within the wave's intenser day, |
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| All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers |
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| So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou |
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| For whose path the Atlantic's level powers |
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| Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below |
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| The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear |
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| The sapless foliage of the ocean, know |
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| Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, |
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| And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear! |
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IV
If I were a dead
leaf thou mightest bear; |
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| If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; |
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| A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share |
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| The impulse of thy strength, only less free |
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| Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even |
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| I were as in my boyhood, and could be |
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| The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, |
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| As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed |
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| Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven |
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| As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. |
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| O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! |
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| I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! |
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| A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd |
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| One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud. |
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V
Make me thy lyre,
even as the forest is: |
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| What if my leaves are falling like its own? |
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| The tumult of thy mighty harmonies |
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| Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, |
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| Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, |
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| My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! |
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| Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, |
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| Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth; |
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| And, by the incantation of this verse, |
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| Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth |
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| Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! |
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| Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth |
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| The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, |
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| If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? |
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