The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven,
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven !
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;

Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

1821.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

I.

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 every where ;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, hear!

II.

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

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free

To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow: Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt-as now.

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled

Far from these carrion kites that scream below;
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.—
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow

Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awakened from the dream of life—

'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings.—We decay

Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living

clay.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain ; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawn Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou
Air

Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its
despair!

He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never wearied

love,

Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there,

All new successions to the forms they wear;

Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might

From trees and beasts and men into the Heavens' light.

The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil.
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it, for what

When lofty thought

Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there And move like winds of light on dark and stormy

air.

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal

thought,

Far in the Unapparent.

Chatterton

Rose pale, his solemn agony had not

Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell and as he lived and loved

Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,

Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved : Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.