(4) If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear 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! 50 54 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 : 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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth ! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, P. B. SHELLEY. 65 70 276 NATURE AND THE POET Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile! So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! How perfect was the calm! It seem'd no sleep, 5 11 Ah! then if mine had been the Painter's hand To express what then I saw; and add the gleam, The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet's dream,— I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile, A picture had it been of lasting ease, 15 20 25 Such picture would I at that time have made ; And seen the soul of truth in every part, A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd. So once it would have been,-'tis so no more; Not for a moment could I now behold A smiling sea, and be what I have been : The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old; This, which I know, I speak with mind serene. 30 35 Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend If he had lived, of him whom I deplore, This work of thine I blame not, but commend ; This sea in anger, and that dismal shore. O'tis a passionate work!-yet wise and well, 40 45 And this huge Castle, standing here sublime, waves. Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, 51 56 2777 THE POET'S DREAM On a poet's lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, But feeds on the aerial kisses 5 Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be; Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality! P. B. SHELLEY. 11 278 The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 5 10 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn. W. WORDSWORTH. 279 WITHIN KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense, Of white-robed Scholars only) this immense 5 Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely-calculated less or more: 9 So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense 280 YOUTH AND AGE Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, When I was young ?-Ah, woeful When ! How lightly then it flash'd along: 5 10 |