Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/757

 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

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 O 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 skicy speed Scarce seem'd a vision I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thce 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'

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd One too like thec 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

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