Not from the dead man; George Meredith ODE TO THE WEST WIND O I WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter flee ing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 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; II Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's com motion, 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 Maenad, even from the dim verge Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 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: 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 then, when to outstrip thy skyey 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. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 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 thro' my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley PALLADIUM ET where the upper streams of Simois flow, wood; And Hector was in Ilium, far below, And fought, and saw it not; but there it stood! It stood, and sun and moonshine rained their light On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not fall. So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air; Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll: We visit it by moments, ah, too rare! We shall renew the battle in the plain Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife, And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs, And fancy that we put forth all our life, And never know how with the soul it fares. Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high, |