Ode to the West Wind

- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)  

I
1 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
2 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
3 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

4 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
5 Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
6 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

7 The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
8 Each like a corpse within its grave, until
9 Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

10 Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
11 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
12 With living hues and odours plain and hill:

13 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
14 Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

II
15 Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
16 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
17 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

18 Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
19 On the blue surface of thine a{:e}ry surge,
20 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

21 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
22 Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
23 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

24 Of the dying year, to which this closing night
25 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
26 Vaulted with all thy congregated might

27 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
28 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

III
29 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
30 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
31 Lull'd by the coil of his cryst{`a}lline streams,

32 Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
33 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
34 Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

35 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
36 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
37 For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

38 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
39 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
40 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

41 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
42 And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

IV
43 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
44 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
45 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

46 The impulse of thy strength, only less free
47 Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
48 I were as in my boyhood, and could be

49 The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
50 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
51 Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven

52 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
53 Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
54 I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

55 A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
56 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V
57 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
58 What if my leaves are falling like its own!
59 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

60 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
61 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
62 My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

63 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
64 Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
65 And, by the incantation of this verse,

66 Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
67 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
68 Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

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

my fav poet!