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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!
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 Maenad, 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!
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
Baiae'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: 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
the skiey speed
Scarce seemed 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 chained and bowed
One too like thee:
tameless, and swift, and proud.
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?
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