Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
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.
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!
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a punice 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 grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear !
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 the skley 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.
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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
CAMELEONS feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame :
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue As the light cameleons do, Suiting it to every ray Twenty times a-day?
Poets are on this cold earth, As cameleons might be, Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, cameleons change! Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange That poets range.
Yet dare not stain with wealth or power A poet's free and heavenly mind: If bright cameleons should devour Any food but beams and wind, They would grow as earthly soon As their brother lizards are. Children of a sunnier star, Spirits from beyond the moon, Oh, refuse the boon!
THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI,
IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY.
Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine; Below, far lands are seen tremblingly; Its horror and its beauty are divine. Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, The agonies of anguish and of death.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hues of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanised and harmonise the strain.
And from its head as from one body grow, As [ grass out of a watery rock, Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow, And their long tangles in each other lock, And with unending involutions show
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock The torture and the death within, and saw The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft Peeps idly into these Gorgonian eyes; Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise Out of the cave this hideous light hath cleft, And he comes hastening like a moth that hies After a taper; and the midnight sky Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror; For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare Kindled by that inextricable error,
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air Become a f ] and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there- A woman's countenance, with serpent locks, Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks.
(With what truth I may say
Roma! Roma! Roma! Non è piu come era prima!)
My lost William, thou in whom Some bright spirit lived, and did That decaying robe consume Which its lustre faintly hid, Here its ashes find a tomb, But beneath this pyramid Thou art not-if a thing divine Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine Is thy mother's grief and mine.
Where art thou, my gentle child? Let me think thy spirit feeds, With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds, Among these tombs and ruins wild;-
Let me think that through low seeds Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, Into their hues and scents may pass, A portion
A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
And the spring arose on the garden fair, And the Spirit of Love fell everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
Like a doe in the noon-tide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And narcissi, the fairest among them all, Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness.
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilions of tender green;
And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, It was felt like an odour within the sense;
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