Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,1 Which wheresoe 'er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man2 has drained, who now Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels 680 I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.5 And on the pedestal these words appear— ODE TO THE WEST WIND* I For life and power, even when his feeble hand Lifts still its solemn voice:-but thou art fled; Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. 1 magic decoction (For example of Medea's witch- 2 Ahasuerus, the legendary Wandering Jew, said to have been condemned by Christ, for his insolence, to wander till Christ's second com ing. 81. e., immortal youth, the elixir vitae 4 Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality, last line. 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 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 5 That is, they survived both him who imaged *Note by Shelley: "This poem was conceived The poem has something of the impetuosity of the wind-a breathless swiftness which seems almost to scorn rhyme, and which is characteristic of many of Shelley's longer poems. Characteristically, too, it breathes his intense "passion for reforming the world," the combination of which with lyric delicacy,, as here, is exceedingly rare. Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill II 10 | The impulse of thy strength, only less free Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 50 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: Of some fierce Mænad,1 even from the dim verge Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 60 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth THE INDIAN SERENADE I arise from dreams of thee It dies upon her heart, As I must die on thine, 8 IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 1 A frenzied priestess of Bacchus. 2 closing in 3 Near Naples; the site Oh, beloved as thou art! 16. Oh, lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain 1 An Indian tree of the Magnolia family. On my lips and eyelids pale. FROM PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 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 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 forever. 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, ASIA'S RESPONSE My soul is an enchanted boat, Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. Till, like one in slumber bound, Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound. We have passed Age's icy caves, And Manhood's dark and tossing waves, And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray; Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee Of shadow-peopled Infancy, Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;* A paradise of vaulted bowers Lit by downward-gazing flowers, 12 Peopled by shapes too bright to see, 18 30 And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee; Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously! THE CLOUD I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 24 I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 10 Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions In music's most serene dominions; Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. This is the song of an unseen spirit to Asia, who is the dramatic embodiment of the spirit of love working through all nature. I sift the snow on the mountains below, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, 10 20 Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, *In imagination reversing the course of nature, she passes back through the portals of earthly being to the spirit's condition of primordial immortality. The Spirit he loves remains; The pavilion of heaven is bare, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. 30 And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, From the depth of heaven above, That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon, 40 50 May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; 60 The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow, gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,1 And out of the caverns of rain, 80 Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air When the powers of the air are chained to my The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is chair, 70 overflowed. 20 30 Is the million-coloured bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, I am the daughter of earth and water, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, 1 An empty tomb. Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; "John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth [twenty-sixth] year, on the [220] day of [February], 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in So sweet a place."-From Shelley's Preface. "Adonais" is of course a poetical name for Keats. The elegy was the outcome of Shelley's noble indignation over a death which he somewhat mistakenly supposed was immediately due to the savage criticism of Keats's reviewers-"Wretched men," as he characterized them, who "know not what they do," murderers who had "spoken daggers but used none.' See Eng. Lit., p. 258. The especially beautiful concluding stanzas, which are given here, are almost purely personal; Shelley is communing with himself, and thinking of his own troubled life. |