And the red and golden vines Piercing with their trellised lines The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air; the flower Glimmering at my feet; the line Of the olive-sandall'd Apennine In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun; And of living things each one;
And my spirit, which so long
Darken'd this swift stream of song,-- Interpenetrated lie
By the glory of the sky; Be it love, light, harmony,
Odour, or the soul of all
Which from Heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe.
Noon descends, and after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset's radiant springs: And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies
'Mid remember'd agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being),
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.
Other flowering isles must be In the sea of life and agony : Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulf: ev'n now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folding wings they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it
To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell 'mid lawny hills Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine
Of all flowers that breathe and shine -We may live so happy there, That the spirits of the air
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing paradise The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves Under which the bright sea heaves; While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies;
And the Love which heals all strife Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood. They, not it, would change; and soon Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain,
And the Earth grow young again!
275. ODE TO THE WEST WIND.
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 everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; Hear, O hear!
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, ev'n 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 vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
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 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! 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: O hear!
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 was as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision, I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud !
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed !
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, ev'n 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 wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
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! Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee: I saw thee every day; and all the while 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.
How perfect was the calm! It seem'd no sleep, No mood, which season takes away, or brings: I could have fancied that the mighty Deep Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
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,--
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