Of that power which is the glass Thou remainest such alway. SECOND SPIRIT. Thou art but the mind's first chamber, But the portal of the grave, THIRD SPIRIT. Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn At your presumption, atom-born! What is heaven? and what are ye Who its brief expanse inherit ? What are suns and spheres which flee With the instinct of that spirit Of which ye are but a part? Drops which Nature's mighty heart Drives through thinnest veins. Depart! What is heaven? a globe of dew, Filling in the morning new Some eyed flower, whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world: Constellated suns unshaken, ODE TO THE WEST WIND.* 1. 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, * This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset, with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently nfluenced by the winds which announce it. Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; 11. 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 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 III. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 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; The impulse of thy strength, only less free The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 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, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth |