Lips touched by seraphim
Breathe out the choral hymn,-

God save the Queen!

Sweet as if angels sang,

Loud as that trumpet's clang,

Wakening the world's dead gang,God save the Queen!

ODE TO HEAVEN

CHORUS OF SPIRITS

FIRST SPIRIT

PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!

Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then,
Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome

Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along ;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;

And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode

Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass

Worship thee with bended knees.

Ode to Heaven. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Dated in the Harvard MS., Florence, December, 1819.

Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away;

Thou remainest such alway.

SECOND SPIRIT

Thou art but the mind's first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;

But the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam
From the shadow of a dream!

THIRD SPIRIT

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!

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,

With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

AN EXHORTATION

CHAMELEONS feed on light and air ;
Poets' food is love and fame;
If in this wide world of care

Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,

Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray

Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea.
Where light is, chameleons change;
Where love is not, poets do;
Fame is love disguised; if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power

A poet's free and heavenly mind.
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon

An Exhortation. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Dated in the Harvard MS., Pisa, April, 1820. ii. 1 on, Shelley, 1820 || in, Harvard MS.

As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
Oh, refuse the boon!

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 odors 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 com motion,

Ode to the West Wind. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Composed in the wood near Florence, in the fall.