Ode to the West Wind
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
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
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 aëry
surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from
the head
Of some fierce Maenad, 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 vapours, 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,
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! 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 seem'd 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 chain'd
and bow'd
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 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?
