Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/756

 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

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'

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 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: O hear'

in 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 Baiac's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

�� �