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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, | |
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| Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, | |
| Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou, | 5 |
| Who chariotest to their dark, wintry bed | |
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| The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, | |
| Each like a corpse within its grave, until | |
| Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow | |
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| Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill | 10 |
| (Driving sweet buds, like flocks, to feed in air) | |
| With living hues and odors, plain and hill: | |
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| Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere; | |
| Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear! | |
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II. Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion, | 15 |
| Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, | |
| Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, | |
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| Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread | |
| On the blue surface of thine airy surge, | |
| Like the bright hair uplifted from the head | 20 |
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| 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 | |
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| Of the dying year, to which this closing night | |
| Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre | 25 |
| Vaulted with all thy congregated might | |
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| Of vapors; from whose solid atmosphere | |
| Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear! | |
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III. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams | |
| The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, | 30 |
| Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, | |
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| Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay, | |
| And saw in sleep old palaces and towers, | |
| Quivering within the waves’ intenser day, | |
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| All overgrown with azure moss and flowers | 35 |
| So sweet the sense faints picturing them! Thou | |
| For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers | |
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| Cleave themselves into chasms, while, far below, | |
| The sea-blooms, and the oozy woods which wear | |
| The sapless foliage of the ocean, know | 40 |
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| Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, | |
| And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear! | |
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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 | 45 |
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| The impulse of thy strength—only less free | |
| Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even | |
| I were as in my boyhood, and could be | |
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| The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven | |
| As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed | 50 |
| Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne’er have striven | |
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| As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. | |
| Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! | |
| I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! | |
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| A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed | 55 |
| One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud. | |
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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 | |
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| Will take from both a deep autumnal tone— | 60 |
| Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, | |
| My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! | |
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| Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, | |
| Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth; | |
| And, by the incantation of this verse, | 65 |
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| Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth | |
| Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! | |
| Be through my lips to unawakened earth | |
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| The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, | |
| If winter comes, can spring be far behind? | 70 |
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