(2) Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, 15 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 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 20 25 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, Lull'd 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 30 35 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 grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear! 40 (4) If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 45 50 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! 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! Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea. So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! So like, so very like, was day to day! Whene'er I look'd, thy image still was there; It trembled, but it never pass'd away. 5 How perfect was the calm! It seem'd no sleep, 11 Ah! then if mine had been the Painter's hand 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, O'tis a passionate work!-yet wise and well, 40 And this huge Castle, standing here sublime, 45 waves. Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind! Such happiness, wherever it be known, Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind. But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, 51 50 277 THE POET'S DREAM On a poet's lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be ; Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality! 278 P. B. SHELLEY. 5 11 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, It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 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. |