Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awaken'd, were,
Or the waves of Baiæ, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.
And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant
Felt the sound of the funeral chant,
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners deep and low;
The weary sound and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the pores of the coffin plank;
The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.
The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul;
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep.
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.
Swift summer into the autumn flow'd,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun look'd clear and bright,
Mocking the spoil of the secret night.
The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below.
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man.
And Indian plants, of scent and hue
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf after leaf, day after day,
Were mass'd into the common clay.
And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,
And white with the whiteness of what is dead,
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past;
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.
And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,
Out of their birth-place of ugly weeds,
Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem,
Which rotted into the earth with them.
The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the winds did those of the upper air.
Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks,
Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless net-work of parasite bowers
Mass'd into ruin, and all sweet flowers.
Between the time of the wind and the snow,
All lotheliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splash'd with many a speck,
Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back.
And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank
Stretch'd out its long and hollow shank,
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.
And plants, at whose names the verse feels loth, Fill'd the place with a monstrous undergrowth, Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, Livid, and starr'd with a lurid dew.
And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, Started like mist from the wet ground cold; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
With a spirit of growth had been animated!
Their mass rotted off them, flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake;
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.
Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes
Damm'd it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.
And hour by hour, when the air was still,
The vapors arose which have strength to kill:
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could melt.
And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday
Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burn'd and bit.
The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew,
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy ax of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore,
As blood to a heart that will beat no more.
For Winter came: the wind was his whip:
One choppy finger was on his lip:
He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clank'd at his girdle like manacles;
His breath was a chain which without a sound The earth, and the air, and the water bound; He came, fiercely driven in his chariot-throne By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone.
Then the weeds which were forms of living death
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath.
Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!
And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:
The birds dropp'd stiff from the frozen air,
And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!
Dream, sleep! this pale blossom, thy cradle and bed,
Will it rock thee not, infant? "Tis beating with dread!
Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we,
That when the ship sinks we no longer may be?
What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
To be after life what we have been before?
Not to touch those sweet hands? Not to look on those
eyes,
Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise
Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day,
Have so long call'd my child, but which now fades away
Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?" Lo! the
ship
Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs,
and eyne,
Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously,
Of solid bones crush'd by the infinite stress
Of the snake's adamantine voluptuousness;
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins,
Swoln with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and
the splash
As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash
The thin winds and soft waves into thunder! the
And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams,
Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,
A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other
Is winning his way from the fate of his brother,
To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat
Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought
Urge on the keen keel, the brine foams. At the stern
Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn
In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone,
"Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone,
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,
Mix'd with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane:
The hurricane came from the west, and past on
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously,
With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, Fear,
Love, Beauty, are mix'd in the atmosphere,
Which trembles and burns with the fervor of dread
Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,
Like a meteor of light o'er the waters! her child
Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring: so smiled
The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother
Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste. The child and the ocean still smile on each other,
Black as a cormorant the screaming blast,
Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, past,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world,
Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurl'd,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain,
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has past,
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast;
They are scatter'd like foam on the torrent; and where
The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air
Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.
And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lull'd by the motion and murmurings,
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,
And overhead glorious, but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapors of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heap'd waves behold
The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above,
And, like passions made still by the presence of Love,
Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide
Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's
azure smile,
The wide world of waters is vibrating. Where
Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray
With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the
battle
Stain the clear air with sun-bows; the jar, and the
PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then!
Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,
Of acts and ages yet to come!
Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;
And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.
Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode
Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away:
Thou remainest such alway.
Thou art but the mind's first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;
But the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam
From the shadow of a dream!
Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!
What is heaven? and what are ye
Who its brief expanse inherit?
What are suns and spheres which flee
With the instinct of that spirit
Of which ye are but a part?
Drops which Nature's mighty heart
Drives through thinnest veins. Depart!
What is heaven? a globe of dew,
Filling in the morning new
Some eyed flower, whose young leaves waken Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
On an unimagined world:
Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless are furl'd
In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gather'd there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.
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, O, hear!
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Bais'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!
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
* This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which
pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw,
at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attend. A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd ed by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. the Cisalpine regions.
The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympa. thizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it. 3 H
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?
WRITTEN, OCTOBER, 1819, BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY.
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;
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 ye are.
To those who have greatly suffer'd and done!
Never name in story
Was greater than that which ye shall have won.
Conquerors have conquer'd their foes alone,
Whose revenge, pride, and power they have over-
thrown:
Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.
Bind, bind every brow
With coronals of violet, ivy, and pine:
Hide the blood-stains now
With hues which sweet nature has made divine:
Green strength, azure hope, and eternity:
But let not the pansy among them be;
Ye were injured, and that means memory.
Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying, Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind. BYRON.
A GLORIOUS people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations: Liberty
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
Gleam'd. My soul spurn'd the chains of its dismay,
And, in the rapid plumes of song,
Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering inverse o'er its accustom'd prey;
Till from its station in the heaven of fame
The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame Which paves the void was from behind it flung As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came A voice out of the deep: I will record the same.
The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth :
The burning stars of the abyss were hurl'd
Into the depths of heaven. The dædal earth,
That island in the ocean of the world,
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air;
But this divinest universe
Was yet a chaos and a curse,
For thou wert not: but power from worst producing
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms: The bosom of their violated nurse
Groan'd, for beasts warr'd on beasts, and worms
And men on men; each heart was as a hell of
Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion
Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid,
Temple and prison, to many a swarming million, Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. This human living multitude
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;
Into the shadow of her pinions wide, Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonish'd herds of men from every side.
The nodding promontories, and blue isles,
And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, bask'd glorious in the open smiles Of favoring heaven: from their enchanted caves
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