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;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, Oh 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

Of some fierce Mænad, 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 vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: Oh hear !

III

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 Baia'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!

IV

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.

V

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,
Be thou,

Sweet though in sadness.
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? 1819. 1820.

THE INDIAN SERENADE

I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me--who knows how!
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
And the Champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart ;-
As I must on thine,
O! beloved as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast ;-
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

1819. 1822.

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

THE Fountains mingle with the River
And the Rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?-

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother,
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What are all these kissings worth

If thou kiss not me? 1819. 1819

And moments aye divided by keen pangs Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,

Scorn and despair, these are mine empire ;

More glorious far than that which thou surveyest

From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God!

Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame

Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,

Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured ; without herb,

Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

I ask the Earth, have not the mountains

felt ?

Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,

Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs

The leaden-colored east; for then they lead

The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom

-As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim

Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood

From these pale feet, which then might trample thee

If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.

Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin

Will hunt thee undefended thro' the wide Heaven!

How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,

Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,

Not exultation, for I hate no more,
As then ere misery made me wise. The

Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou

Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will

Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist

Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,

The Titan? He who made his agony The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?

Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow. fed streams,

Now seen athwart frore vapors, deep below,

Thro' whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once

With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;

Why scorns the spirit which informs ye,

When Plague had fallen on man, and beast and worm,

And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;

And in the corn, and vines, and meadowgrass,

Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry

With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained

With the contagion of a mother's hate Breathed on her child's destroyer; aye, I heard

Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,

Yet my innumerable seas and streams, Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air.

And the inarticulate people of the dead,

Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate In secret joy and hope those dreadful words

But dare not speak them.

Prometheus.

Venerable mother!