Ode to the West Wind

4Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

5Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

6Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

7The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

8Each like a corpse within its grave, until

9Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

10Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

11(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

12With living hues and odours plain and hill:

13Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

14Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

15Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,

16Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

17Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

18Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

19On the blue surface of thine aery surge,

20Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

21Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

22Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

23The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

24Of the dying year, to which this closing night

25Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

26Vaulted with all thy congregated might

27Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

28Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

29Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

30The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

31Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

32Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

33And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

34Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

35All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

36So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

37For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

38Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

39The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

40The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

41Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

42And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

43If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

44If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

45A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

46The impulse of thy strength, only less free

47Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

48I were as in my boyhood, and could be

49The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

50As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

51Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

52As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

53Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

54I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

55A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

56One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

57Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

58What if my leaves are falling like its own!

59The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

60Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

61Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

62My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

63Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

64Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

65And, by the incantation of this verse,

66Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

67Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

68Be through my lips to unawakened earth

69The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,

70If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?