The stirring memory of a thousand years,

And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears!

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,

Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,

Over the unreturning brave, - alas!

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass

Which now beneath them, but above shall grow

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass

Of living valor, rolling on the foe,

And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,

Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,

the day

The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
The morn the marshalling in arms
Battle's magnificently stern array!

The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay,

Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,

Rider and horse

friend, foe, — in one red burial blent!

5

Stanzas

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.

To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;

Then battle for freedom whenever you can,
And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.

Epigram

The world is a bundle of hay,

Mankind are the asses who pull;

Each tugs it a different way,

And the greatest of all is John Bull.

On my Thirty-third Birthday, January 22, 1821

Through life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?

The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend,
Like Lucifer, when hurled from heaven for sinning;
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,
Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far,
Till our own weakness shows us what we are.

Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land,
And trace it in this poem every
line:

I don't pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is, that I have nothing planned
Unless it were to be a moment merry,
A novel word in my vocabulary.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Ode to the West Wind

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,

10

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 odors plain and hill :

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

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,

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 Mænad, 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,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams

Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
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

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

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

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 thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! 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
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

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