Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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shrink and dwindle

      Into the hell from which it first was hurled,

      A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;

      Till human thoughts might kneel alone,

      Each before the judgement-throne

      Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!

      Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure

      From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew

      From a white lake blot Heaven’s blue portraiture,

      Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue

      And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,

      Till in the nakedness of false and true

      They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!

      XVII.

      He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

      Can be between the cradle and the grave

      Crowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!

      If on his own high will, a willing slave,

      He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor

      What if earth can clothe and feed

      Amplest millions at their need,

      And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?

      O, what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

      Driving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne,

      Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,

      And cries: ‘Give me, thy child, dominion

      Over all height and depth’? if Life can breed

      New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,

      Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one!

      XVIII.

      Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave

      Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star

      Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

      Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car

      Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;

      Comes she not, and come ye not,

      Rulers of eternal thought,

      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?—The solemn harmony

      XIX.

      Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing

      To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;

      Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging

      Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,

      Sinks headlong through the aereal golden light

      On the heavy-sounding plain,

      When the bolt has pierced its brain;

      As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;

      As a far taper fades with fading night,

      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.

      ODE TO THE WEST WIND

      I.

      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, O 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 airy surge,

      Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

      Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge

      Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

      The locks of the approaching

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