Posts tagged The
Posts tagged The
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,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
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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
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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:
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Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, hear!
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II.
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,
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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
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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,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
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Of vapours, 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,
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 wave’s intenser day,
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All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
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
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Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey 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
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The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O, uncontroulable! 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 skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
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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!
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A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
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,
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,
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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?
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
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Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’
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The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
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Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
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She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
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To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
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What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
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This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
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My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
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The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
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I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
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Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
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I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
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Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
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Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
These of living emanate a formidable light,
Which is equal to death, and when used
Gives increase eternally.
What fortifies in separate thought
Is not drawn by wind or by man defiled.
So whispers the parable of doubleness.
As it is necessary not to submit
To power which weakens the hidden forms;
It is extraordinarily more essential
Not to deny welcome to these originating forces
When they gather within our heat
To give us habitation.
The one life must be attempted with the other,
That we may embark upon the fiery work
For which we were certainly made.
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What has been separated from the mother,
Must again be joined; for we were born of spirit,
And to spirit all mortal things return,
As it is necessary in the method of earth.
So sings the parable of singleness.
My comforter does not conceal his face;
I have seen appearances that were not marshalled
By sleep.
Perhaps I am to be stationed
At the nets which move through this completing sea.
Or I have hunting on my sign.
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Yet the ground is visible,
The center of our seeing. (The houses rest
Like sentinels on this hawking star.
Two women are bathing near a trestle;
Their bodies dress the world in golden birds;
The skin of their throats is a dancing flute…
How alter or change? How properly
Find an exact equation? What is flying
Anywhere that is more essential to our quest?
Even the lake… boat walking on its blue streets;
Organ of thunder muttering in the sky… A tiger
Standing on the edge of a plowed field…
What is necessary? What is inseparable to know?
The children seek silvery-pretty caves…
What are we to teach?)
The distance is not great
To worlds of magnificent joy or nowhere.