Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!

      XVII.

      He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

      Can be between the cradle and the grave

      Crowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!

      If on his own high will, a willing slave,

      He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor

      What if earth can clothe and feed

      Amplest millions at their need,

      And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?

      O, what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

      Driving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne,

      Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,

      And cries: ‘Give me, thy child, dominion

      Over all height and depth’? if Life can breed

      New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,

      Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one!

      XVIII.

      Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave

      Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star

      Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

      Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car

      Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;

      Comes she not, and come ye not,

      Rulers of eternal thought,

      To judge, with solemn truth, life’s ill-apportioned lot?

      Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

      Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?

      O Liberty! if such could be thy name

      Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:

      If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought

      By blood or tears, have not the wise and free

      Wept tears, and blood like tears?—The solemn harmony

      XIX.

      Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing

      To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;

      Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging

      Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,

      Sinks headlong through the aereal golden light

      On the heavy-sounding plain,

      When the bolt has pierced its brain;

      As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;

      As a far taper fades with fading night,

      As a brief insect dies with dying day,—

      My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

      Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away

      Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,

      As waves which lately paved his watery way

      Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.

      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 odours plain and hill;

      Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

      Destroyer and preserver; hear, O 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 vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

      Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O 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 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!

      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.

      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