Ode to the West Wind

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

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,

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, 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 aëry surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, 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 vapours, 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,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline
streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae'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 skiey speed

Scarce seem'd 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 chain'd and
bow'd

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

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit
fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new
birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?