Volume Iii Part 18 (2/2)

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray 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; 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.

O! 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?

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley [1792-1822]

AUTUMN: A DIRGE

The warm sun is failing; the bleak wind is wailing; The bare boughs are sighing; the pale flowers are dying; And the Year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying.

Come, months, come away, From November to May; In your saddest array Follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling; the nipped worm is crawling; The rivers are swelling; the thunder is knelling For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play-- Ye, follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear.

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley [1792-1822]

AUTUMN

The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fas.h.i.+oned, I'll put a trinket on.

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