ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

I.

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, oh hear!

II.

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 !

III.

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,
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: Oh hear !

IV.

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 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.

V.

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 autumnaļ 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?

AN EXHORTATION.

CHAMELEONS feed on light and air;

Poets' food is love and fame.

If in this wide world of care

Poets could but find the same

With as little toil as they,

Would they ever change their hue

As the light chameleons do,

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;
Where love is not, poets do.
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind.
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon.
Oh refuse the boon!

THE INDIAN SERENADE.

I ARISE from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me-who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream

The champak-odours fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint

It dies upon her heart,

As I must die on thine,
Beloved as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!

I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas !
My heart beats loud and fast:

Oh press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!

LINES WRITTEN FOR MISS SOPHIA STACEY.

I.

THOU art fair, and few are fairer

Of the nymphs of earth or ocean.
They are robes that fit the wearer-

Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
Ever falls and shifts and glances,

As the life within them dances.

II.

Thy deep eyes, a double planet,

Gaze the wisest into madness

With soft clear fire. The winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of tender gladness
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.

III.

If whatever face thou paintest

In those eyes grows pale with pleasure,
If the fainting soul is faintest

When it hears thy harp's wild measure,
Wonder not that, when thou speakest,
Of the weak my heart is weakest.

IV.

As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds waken,
As the birds at thunder's warning,

As aught mute yet deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit,
Is my heart when thine is near it.

Via Val Fonda, Florence.