A Wave, a Leaf, a Cloud

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 skiey speed   Scarce seem'd 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 chain'd and bow'd   One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

Spirit of Solitude

Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight's tingling silentness; If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs; If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred; then forgive This boast, belovèd brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Spirit of Solitude, 1816

Paean in the Mist

'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the paean With which the legion'd rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Fleck'd with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Signal Tree

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss     Of quiet!--Look, adown the dusk hill-side,         A troop of Oxford hunters going home,     As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!         From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.             Quick! let me fly, and cross     Into yon farther field!--'Tis done; and see,         Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify         The orange and pale violet evening-sky,     Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree! I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,     The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,         The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,     And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.         I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,              Yet, happy omen, hail!     Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale         (For there thine earth forgetting eyelids keep         The morningless and unawakening sleep     Under the flowery oleanders pale), Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!--     Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,         These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,     That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;         To a boon southern country he is fled,              And now in happier air,     Wandering with the great Mother's train divine         (And purer or more subtle soul than thee,         I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)     Within a folding of the Apennine, -Matthew Arnold, Thyrsis: A Monody,1861

Ancient Mariner

In mist or cloud on mast or shroud     It perch'd for vespers nine, Whiles all the night thro' fog-smoke white     Glimmer'd the white moon-shine. "God save thee, ancyent Marinere! -William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, 1798

Foliage of Ocean

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 Baiae'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 gray with fear,   And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

Windless Bower

To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain and guilt, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Fiery Altar

Seem'd all on fire, within, around,       Deep sacristy and altar's pale,   Shone every pillar foliage-bound,       And glimmer'd all the dead men's mail. -Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel: Canto VI, 1805

Obelisks of Fire

Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Lustre in Autumn Sky

The day becomes more solemn and serene     When noon is past; there is a harmony     In autumn, and a lustre 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. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, 1817

Autumn Trellis

And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellis'd lines The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Autumn Lyre

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 wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!   And, by the incantation of this verse,   Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth   Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!   Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth   The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,   If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

Blaze on Water

And the Sun's image radiantly intense "Burned on the waters of the well that glowed Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze With winding paths of emerald fire--there stood "Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze Of his own glory, ... -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Triumph of Life, 1824

West Wind

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,   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, oh hear! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

Dark Distortion

Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, Circling immeasurably fast, and laved With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms In darkness over it. I' the midst was left, Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Spirit of Solitude, 1816

Phantasies on a Stream

And others came . . . Desires and Adorations,     Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies,     Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations     Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;     And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,     And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam     Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,     Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, 1821

Hazel Memory

I would record with no reluctant voice The woods of autumn and their hazel bowers With milk-white clusters hung; the rod and line, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Secret Steps

In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. When early youth had past, he left His cold fireside and alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Spirit of Solitude, 1816

Golden Rain

So their plumes of purple grain, Starr'd with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Light and Fragrance

Noon descends around me now: 'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, When a soft and purple mist Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance, far From the curv'd horizon's bound To the point of Heaven's profound, Fills the overflowing sky; And the plains that silent lie Underneath, the leaves unsodden Where the infant Frost has trodden -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Reflection on Absence

Thus absence dies, and dying proves No absence can consist with loves That do partake of fair perfection:     Since in the darkest night they may     By their quick motion find a way To see each other by reflection.   The waving sea can with such flood Bathe some high palace that hath stood Far from the main up in the river:     Oh think not then but love can do     As much, for that's an ocean too, That flows not every day, but ever. -Owen Felltham, When, Dearest, I But Think on Thee, 1659

Enlightenment

On a house by the sea, in a land far away, a sentry stood his ground. And in his beam was a certainty of purpose, and enlightenment. He was kept by a keeper, and he answered far away prayers. He knew not duty or devotion, or the pain and joy of love. He simply drew his lines of light on a house by the sea, in a land far away. And I envied him. -Thomas N. Wynne III, The Lighthouse, 1997

Angel of Rain and Fire

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 aery 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: oh hear! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

Tempest Fleet

Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track; Whilst above, the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily, And behind, the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819