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,     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 odours plain and hill:     Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;     Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!     2.     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 sepulchre,     Vaulted with all thy congregated might     Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere     Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!     3.     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!     4.     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.     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.     5.     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?