IV. Glory, glory, glory, To those who have greatly suffered and done! Was greater than that which ye shall have won. Conquerors have conquered their foes alone, Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have overthrown : Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. V. Bind, bind every brow With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine: Hide the blood-stains now With hues which sweet Nature has made divine Green strength, azure hope, and eternity. But let not the pansy among them be; Ye were injured, and that means memory. ODE TO HEAVEN. CHORUS OF SPIRITS. FIRST SPIRIT. PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights! Paradise of golden lights! Deep, immeasurable, vast, Which art now, and which wert then! Of the present and the past, Of the eternal where and when, Presence-chamber, temple, home! Ever-canopying dome Of acts and ages yet to come! Glorious shapes have life in thee :- Thy deep chasms and wildernesses; And swift stars with flashing tresses; And icy moons most cold and bright; And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light. Even thy name is as a god, Worship thee with bended knees. Thou remainest such alway. SECOND SPIRIT. Thou art but the mind's first chamber, Lighted up by stalactites; From the shadow of a dream! THIRD SPIRIT. Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn Drops which Nature's mighty heart Drives through thinnest veins. Depart! What is heaven? A globe of dew, Filling in the morning new Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world: Constellated suns unshaken, Orbits measureless, are furled In that frail and fading sphere, With ten millions gathered there, To tremble, gleam, and disappear. ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 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, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 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 Mænad, 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, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, 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, IV. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 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. V. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth AN EXHORTATION. 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 Twenty times a-day? Poets are on this cold earth As chameleons might be Yet dare not stain with wealth or power VOL II. THE INDIAN SERENADE. I ARISE from dreams of thee |