[TK]
I |
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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 | trumpet | |
| (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, oh hear! | ||
II |
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| 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 aëry 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° | funeral song | |
| Of the dying year, to which this closing night | ||
| Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,° | tomb | |
| Vaulted with all thy congregated° might | gathered | |
| Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere | ||
| Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! | ||
III |
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| Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams | ||
| The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, | ||
| Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline 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 gray with fear, | ||
| And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! | ||
IV |
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| 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 thy skiey speed | ||
| Scarce seem’d 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 chain’d and bow’d | ||
| One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. | ||
V |
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| 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 wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! | ||
| And, by the incantation° of this verse, | chanting | |
| Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth | ||
| Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! | ||
| Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth | ||
| The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, | ||
| If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? |