Great Spirit, deepest Love! Which rulest and dost move _150 All things which live and are, within the Italian shore; Who spreadest Heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor; Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command _155 The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison From the Earth's bosom chill; Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison! Bid the Earth's plenty kill! _160 Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, Be their tomb who planned To make it ours and thine! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill _165 And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire-- Be man's high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, _170 And frowns and fears from thee, Would not more swiftly flee Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.-- Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be _175 This city of thy worship ever free! NOTES: _143 old 1824; lost B. _147 black 1824; blue B. *** AUTUMN: A DIRGE. [Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.] 1. The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. _5 Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold Year, _10 And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. 2. The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone _15 To his dwelling; Come, Months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play-- Ye, follow the bier _20 Of the dead cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. *** THE WANING MOON. [Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.] And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky East, _5 A white and shapeless mass-- *** TO THE MOON. [Published (1) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824, (2) by W.M. Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works", 1870.]