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 Baiæ’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 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear! 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 The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed 50 Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 55 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. Make me thy lyre, ev’n as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 60 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! be thou me, impetuous One! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse, 65 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind? 70 _Percy Bysshe Shelley._ CCXXII _ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE._ My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5 But being too happy in thy happiness,-- That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10