As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
Oh, refuse the boon!

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 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 com motion,

Ode to the West Wind. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Composed in the wood near Florence, in the fall.

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 Baiæ'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 be

low

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 e;
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 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 :
What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 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
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?

AN ODE

WRITTEN OCTOBER, 1819, BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD

RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY

ARISE, arise, arise!

There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread!

Be your wounds like eyes

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay?

Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they! Who said they were slain on the battle-day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken!

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes.

An Ode written October, 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their Liberty, Shelley, 1820 || An Ode to the Assertors of Liberty, Mrs. Shelley, 18391. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820.

Be the cold chains shaken

To the dust where your kindred repose, repose.
Their bones in the grave will start and move
When they hear the voices of those they love
Most loud in the holy combat above.

Wave, wave high the banner,

When Freedom is riding to conquest by!
Though the slaves that fan her

Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.
And ye who attend her imperial car,
Lift not your hands in the banded war
But in her defence whose children

Glory, glory, glory,

ye are.

-Civil Del.

To those who have greatly suffered and done!
Never name in story

Was greater than that which ye shall have won.
Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,

Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have overthrown.

Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.

Bind, bind every brow

With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine!

Hide the blood-stains now

With hues which sweet nature has made di

Green strength, azure hope, and eternity;
But let not the pansy among them be —
Ye were injured, and that means memory.