Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame; To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot? Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? O, Liberty! if such could be thy name Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee: If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears? harmony The solemn Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing When the bolt has pierced its brain; As a brief insect dies with dying day, My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. F Poems on Time and its Changes. OZYMANDIAS. I MET a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone TIME. UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years, Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ; Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea? 1821. THE SEASONS. THE blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds Over the earth,-next come the snows, and rain, And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train; Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again, Shedding soft dews from her ætherial wings; Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things. Poems on Time and its Changes. OZYMANDIAS. I MET a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone TIME. UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years, Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ; Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea? 1821. THE SEASONS. THE blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain, And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train; Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again, Shedding soft dews from her ætherial wings; Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things. |