And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea, And, like passions made still by the presence of Love, Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's azure smile. Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the rattle Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness; And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion, A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean, Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread ODES. ODE TO HEAVEN. CHORUS OF SPIRITS. FIRST SPIRIT. PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights! Deep, immeasurable, vast, Which art now and which wert then! Of the present and the past, Of acts and ages yet to come! Glorious shapes have life in thee, Living globes which ever throng Even thy name is as a god, SECOND SPIRIT. Thou art but the mind's first chamber, But the portal of the grave, Where a world of new delights Will make thy best glories seem THIRD SPIRIT. Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn What is heaven? and what are ye Who its brief expanse inherit? What are suns and spheres which flee With the instinct of that spirit Of which ye are but a part? Drops which Nature's mighty heart Drives through thinnest veins. Depart! What is heaven? a globe of dew, Filling in the morning new Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world: Constellated suns unshaken, Orbits measureless, are furled In that frail and fading sphere. ODE TO THE WEST WIND.* I. O, WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; II. Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night 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 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, 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. All overgrown with azure moss and flowers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, IV. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest hear; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed ! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed V. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? AN ODE. [WRITTEN, OCTOBER, 1819, BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY]. ARISE, arise, arise! There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread; Be your wounds like eyes To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay? Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they; Awaken, awaken, awaken! The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes; To the dust where your kindred repose, repose: Wave, wave high the banner! When freedom is riding to conquest by: Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh. Glory, glory, glory, To those who have greatly suffered and done! Was greater than that which ye shall have won, Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown: Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. Bind, bind every brow With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine: Hide the blood-stains now With hues which sweet nature has made divine: Green strength, azure hope, and eternity. But let not the pansy among them be; Ye were injured, and that means memory. ODE TO LIBERTY. "Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying, I. A GLORIOUS people vibrated again The lightning of the nations: Liberty From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, Clothed itself, sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, |