Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our

state,

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

Ask why the sunlight not forever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain

river,

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,

Why fear and dream and death and birth

Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom,-why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses givenTherefore the names of Dæmon, Ghost, and Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavor, Frail spells-whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,

From all we hear and all we see, Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone-like mist o'er mountains driven,

Or music by the night wind sent, Through strings of some still instrument,

Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds. depart

And come, for some uncertain moments lent.

Man were immortal, and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies, That wax and wane in lovers' eyesThou that to human thought art nourish

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed,

I was not heard-I saw them not—
When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing

All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow

With beating heart and streaming eyes,

even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outstretched with me the envious

night

They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free

This world from its dark slavery,

That thou-O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past-there is a harmony
In autumn, and a luster in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or
seen,

As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply

Its calm-to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

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,

ENGLAND IN 1819

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,1

2

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,-mud from a muddy spring,

Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,

A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,

An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and
slay;

Religion Christless, Godless-a book sealed;
A Senate, Time's worst statute unre-

And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, Is as a tempest-wingèd ship, whose helm Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,

Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass

Of marble and of color his dreams pass; Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;

Language is a perpetual Orphic song, Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep

They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!

The tempest is his steed, he strides the air; And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,

Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.

A VISION OF THE FUTURE 1 [From Prometheus Unbound] Prometheus. We feel what thou hast heard and seen; yet speak.

Spirit of the Hour. Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled The abysses of the sky and the wide earth. There was a change: the impalpable thin air And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,

As if the sense of love dissolved in them
Had folded itself round the sphered world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe:
Dizzy as with delight I floated down;
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid
plumes,

My coursers sought their birthplace in the