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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 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: Oh 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 grey 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 seemed 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 chained and bowed 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 withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

(1819.)

FROM PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.'

Semichorus I. of Spirits (as Asia and Panthea pass into the forest).

The path through which that lovely twain
Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,

Is curtained out from heaven's wide blue.
Nor sun nor moon nor wind nor rain
Can pierce its interwoven bowers;

Nor aught save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel blown anew,
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone.

Or, when some star, of many a one

That climbs and wanders through steep night,

Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon,-

Ere it is borne away, away,

By the swift heavens that cannot stay,-
It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite:

And the gloom divine is all around,
And underneath is the mossy ground.

Semichorus II.

There the voluptuous nightingales

Are awake through all the broad noonday.

When one with bliss or sadness fails,

And through the windless ivy-boughs,

Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
On its mate's music-panting bosom ;
Another, from the swinging blossom

Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,—
Till some new strain of feeling bear

The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and, rising there
Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener's brain
So sweet that joy is almost pain.

[From the same.]

VOICE in the air, singing.

Life of Life! thy lips enkindle

With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles, before they dwindle,

Make the cold air fire, then screen them
In those looks where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.

Child of Light! thy limbs are burning

Through the vest which seems to hide them, As the radiant lines of morning

Through the clouds, ere they divide them;

And this atmosphere divinest

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.

Fair are others; none beholds thee

(But thy voice sounds low and tender,

Like the fairest), for it folds thee

From the sight-that liquid splendour;
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!

Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest,
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,

And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

(1820.)

HYMN OF PAN.

From the forests and highlands
We come, we come ;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle-bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,

To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal earth,

And of heaven, and the Giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
And then I changed my pipings,-
Singing how down the vale of Mænalus

I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;

It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood-
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

(1820.)

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