The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 120

CANCELLED STANZA.

[Published in "The Times" (Rossetti).]

Gather, O gather, Foeman and friend in love and peace!

Waves sleep together When the blasts that called them to battle, cease.

For fangless Power grown tame and mild _5 Is at play with Freedom's fearless child-- The dove and the serpent reconciled!

ODE TO HEAVEN.

[Published with "Prometheus Unbound", 1820. Dated 'Florence, December, 1819' in Harvard ma.n.u.script (Woodberry). A transcript exists amongst the Sh.e.l.ley ma.n.u.scripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Loc.o.c.k's "Examination", etc., page 39.]

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, _5 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, _10 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; _15 And icy moons most cold and bright, And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a G.o.d, Heaven! for thou art the abode _20 Of that Power which is the gla.s.s Wherein man his nature sees.

Generations as they pa.s.s Worship thee with bended knees.

Their unremaining G.o.ds and they _25 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, _30 Lighted up by stalact.i.tes; But the portal of the grave, Where a world of new delights Will make thy best glories seem But a dim and noonday gleam _35 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? _40 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! _45

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, _50 Orbits measureless, are furled In that frail and fading sphere, With ten millions gathered there, To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF THE ODE TO HEAVEN.

[Published by Mr. C.D. Loc.o.c.k, "Examination", etc., 1903.]

The [living frame which sustains my soul]

Is [sinking beneath the fierce control]

Down through the lampless deep of song I am drawn and driven along--

When a Nation screams aloud _5 Like an eagle from the cloud When a...

When the night...

Watch the look askance and old-- See neglect, and falsehood fold... _10

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

(This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.

The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it.--[Sh.e.l.lEY'S NOTE.])

[Published with "Prometheus Unbound", 1820.]

1.

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 mult.i.tudes: O thou, _5 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 _10 (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, oh, hear!

2.

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,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aery surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head _20

Of some fierce Maenad, 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 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, _25 Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

3.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, _30 Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers _35 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers