Other flowering isles must be In the sea of life and agony: Other spirits float and flee O'er that gulf: ev'n now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folding wings they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell 'mid lawny hills Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine Of all flowers that breathe and shine. --We may live so happy there, That the spirits of the air, Envying us, may even entice To our healing paradise The polluting multitude; But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves Under which the bright sea heaves; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies; And the Love which heals all strife Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood. They, not it, would change; and soon Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain, And the Earth grow young again! P.B. SHELLEY. 275. ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 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 multitudes: O thou 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 (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, O hear! Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 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 airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n 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, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!