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; 2. 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! 3. 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 Baia's bay, All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 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! 4. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 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. 5. 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, 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, + AN EXHORTATION. CHAMELEONS feed on light and air; Poets' food is love and fame. Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever change their hue Suiting it to every ray Twenty times a-day? Poets are on this cold earth As chameleons might be Hidden from their early birth In a cave beneath the sea. Where light is, chameleons change; Fame is love disguised: if few Yet dare not stain with wealth or power THE INDIAN SERENADE. I ARISE from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, Hath led me-who knows how? |