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 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 storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, 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 Baia's bay, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far be low The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 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. A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 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 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, AN ODE WRITTEN OCTOBER, 1819, BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY ARISE, arise, arise! There is blood on the earth that denies 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! Who said they were slain on the battle-day? Awaken, awaken, awaken! The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes. An Ode written October, 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their Liberty, Shelley, 1820 || An Ode to the Assertors of Liberty, Mrs. Shelley, 18391. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Be the cold chains shaken 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. Lift not your hands in the banded war Glory, glory, glory, To those who have greatly suffered and done! Never name in story Was greater than that which ye shall have won. Conquerors have conquered their foes alone, 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 di vine Green strength, azure hope, and eternity; But let not the pansy among them be Ye were injured, and that means memory. ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY I Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, II Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone, Are graven, till the characters be grown III And from its head as from one body grow, On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. Composed at Florence. ii. 6 hues, Rossetti. |