With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
II
15Thou 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,
20Like 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
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
25Will 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: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
30The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
35All 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
40The sapless foliage of the Ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
45A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontroulable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
50As 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!
55A 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
60Will 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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
65And, 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,
70If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
To S[idmouth] and C[astlereagh]
As from their ancestral oak
Two empty ravens wind their clarion,
Yell by yell, and croak for croak,
When they scent the noonday smoke
5 Of fresh human carrion:—
As two gibbering night-birds flit
From their bower of deadly yew
Thro’ the night to frighten it—
When the moon is in a fit,
10 And the stars are none or few:—
As a shark and dogfish wait
Under an Atlantic isle
For the Negro ship whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,
15 Wrinkling their red gills the while:—
Are ye—two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
20 Two vipers tangled into one.
Love’s Philosophy
The Fountains mingle with the River
And the Rivers with the Ocean;
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
5Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
10 And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother,
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
15What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Goodnight
Goodnight? no love, the night is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be—‘good night’.
5How were the night without thee, good
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood—
Then it will be—‘good night’.
The hearts that on each other beat
10 From evening close to morning light
Have nights as good as they are sweet
But never say ‘good night’.
Time Long Past
Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope, which is now forever past,
5A love, so sweet it could not last
Was Time long past.
There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past;
And, was it sadness or delight,
10Each day a shadow onward cast
Which made us wish it yet might last—
That Time long past.
There is regret, almost remorse
For Time long past.
15’Tis like a child’s beloved corse
A father watches, till at last
Beauty is like remembrance, cast
From Time long past.
On a Dead Violet
To —–
The odour from the flower is gone
Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
The colour from the flower is flown
Which glowed of thee and only thee.
5A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form
It lies on my abandoned breast,
And mocks the heart which yet is warm
With its cold, silent rest.
I weep—my tears revive it not,
10 I sigh—it breathes no more on me;
Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.
On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci,
In the Florentine Gallery
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
5Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
10 Which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
’Tis the melodious hues of beauty thrown
15Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
And from its head as from one body grow,
As [ ] grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow,
20 And their long tangles in each other lock,
And with unending involutions shew
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
25 And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft
Peeps idly into these Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light hath cleft,
30 And he comes hastening like a moth that hies
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
’Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
35Kindled by that inextricable error
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a [ ] and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there—
A woman’s countenance, with serpent locks,
40Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks.
To Night
Swiftly walk o’er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight
5Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,—
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!
10Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o’er city and sea and land
Touching all with thine opiate wand—
Come, long-sought!
15When I arose and saw the dawn
I sighed for thee;
When Light rode high, and the dew was gone
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest
20Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
25Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? And I replied,
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
30 Soon, too soon—
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night—
Swift be thine approaching flight,
35 Come soon, soon!
England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
5But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed on th’ untilled field;
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
10Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed,
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Song
To the Men of England
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
5Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
10Many a weapon, chain and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
15Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
20The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap:
Find wealth—let no impostor heap:
Weave robes—let not the idle wear:
Forge arms—in your defence to bear.
25Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells—
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
With plough and spade and hoe and loom
30Trace your grave and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet—till fair
England be your Sepulchre.
To —– (‘Corpses are cold in the tomb’)
Corpses are cold in the tomb—
Stones on the pavement are dumb—
Abortions are dead in the womb
And their mothers look pale, like the death-white shore
5 Of Albion, free no more.
Her sons are as stones in the way—
They are masses of senseless clay—
They are trodden and move not away—
The abortion with which she travaileth
10 Is Liberty, smitten to death.
Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!
For thy Victim is no redressor;
Thou art sole lord and possessor
Of her corpses and clods and abortions—they pave
15 Thy path to the grave.
Hearest thou the festival din
Of Death and Destruction and Sin,
And Wealth crying ‘havoc!’ within?
’Tis the Bacchanal triumph that makes truth dumb—
20 Thine Epithalamium—
Aye, marry thy ghastly wife!
Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife
Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life:
Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant, and Hell be thy guide
25 To the bed of the bride.
The Sensitive-Plant
PART FIRST
A Sensitive-plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
5And the Spring arose on the garden fair
Like the Spirit of love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
10In the garden, the field or the wilderness,
Like a doe in the noon-tide with love’s sweet want
As the companionless Sensitive-plant.
The snow-drop and then the violet
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
15And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess
20Till they die of their own dear loveliness;
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale
Whom youth makes so fair and pass
ion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
25And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
30Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare;
And the wand-like lily which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup
35Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
40Grew in that garden in perfect prime.
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their Heaven of many a tangled hue,
45Broad water lilies lay tremulously,
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss
50Which led through the garden along and across,
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Selected Poems and Prose Page 45