202

TO NIGHT

SWIFT

WIFTLY walk over the western wave,

Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,-

Swift be thy flight!

a

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,

Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day,

Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-

Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,

I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,

“Wouldst thou me?”
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,

Murmured like a noontide bee,
“Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?”—And I replied,

“No, not thee!”

Death will come when thou art dead,

Soon, too soon-
Sleep will come when thou art fled;

Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching Aight,
Come soon, soon!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

203

THE CLOUD

I

BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the gréen plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder,

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,

Lightning my pilot sits,
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder.

It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardors of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and fee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

204

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

I

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,

O

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, ʼmid 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