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, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace-tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour 35 40 With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: Like a rose embower'd In its own green leaves, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy winged thieves. 45 50 55 Sound of vernal showers All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass: Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine 60 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 65 Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chaunt, Match'd with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? 70 What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? 75 With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 80 Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 85 We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 90 95 Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, 100 Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening 1820. now! 105 Percy Bysshe Shelley. ODE TO THE WEST WIND 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; 3 9 12 14 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, 17 Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20 Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge dirge Thou 23 Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might 26 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: Oh, hear! 28 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 31 Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 34 |