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 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

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!

This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.

The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it.SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

ΤΟ

15

20

25

5

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 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

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

30

35

40

45

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

50

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, 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!
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?

55

60

65

70

AN EXHORTATION

[Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Dated 'Pisa, April, 1820' in Harvard MS. (Woodberry), but assigned by Mrs. Shelley to 1819.]

[Published, with the title, Song written for an Indian Air, in The Liberal, ii, 1822. Reprinted (Lines to an Indian Air) by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. The poem is included in the Harvard MS. book, and there is a description by Robert Browning of an autograph copy presenting some variations from the text of 1824. See Leigh Hunt's Correspondence, ii, pp. 264-8.] As I must on thine, Oh, beloved as thou art!

I

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!

II

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;-

5

10

III

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 to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

15

20

CANCELLED PASSAGE
[Published by W. M. Rossetti, Com-
plete P. W., 1870.]

O PILLOW cold and wet with tears!
Thou breathest sleep no more!

Indian Serenade-3 Harvard MS. omits When. 1822.

4 shining] burning Harvard MS.,

15

7 Hath led Browning MS., 1822; Has borne Harvard MS.; Has led 1824. 11 The Champak Harvard MS., 1822, 1824; And the Champak's Browning MS. As I must on 1822, 1824; As I must die on Harvard MS., 1839, 1st ed. beloved Browning MS., Harvard MS., 1839, 1st ed.; Beloved 1822, 1824.

16 Oh,

23 press it

to thine own Browning MS.; press it close to thine Harvard MS., 1824, 1839, 1st ed.; press me to thine own, 1822.

TO SOPHIA [MISS STACEY]
[Published by W. M. Rossetti, Complete P. W., 1870.]

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.

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Works, 1824. The fragment included in the Harvard MS. book.]

5

ΤΟ

15

20

Where art thou, my gentle child? 10
Let me think thy spirit feeds,

With its life intense and mild,

The love of living leaves and weeds

Among these tombs and ruins wild;Let me think that through low seeds

15

Of sweet flowers and sunny grass
Into their hues and scents may
pass
A portion-

MS.; I may 1824. 12 With Harvard MS., 16 Of sweet Harvard MS.; Of the sweet

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 1st ed.] THY little footsteps on the sands

Of a remote and lonely shore;

The twinkling of thine infant hands,

Where now the worm will feed no more;
Thy mingled look of love and glee
When we returned to gaze on thee-

TO MARY SHELLEY

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 2nd ed.]
My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone?
Thy form is here indeed a lovely one-
But thou art fled, gone down the dreary_road,
That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode ;
Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,

For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.

TO MARY SHELLEY

Where

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 2nd ed.]
THE world is dreary,

And I am weary

Of wandering on without thee, Mary;

A joy was erewhile

In thy voice and thy smile,

And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary.

ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]

I

Ir 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.
Upon 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.

II

Yet it is less the horror than the grace

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 hue of beauty thrown

On the Medusa.-5 seems 1839; seem 1824.

6 shine] shrine 1824, 1859.