A Wave, a Leaf, a Cloud (Acadia)

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 (Acadia)

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 (Acadia)

'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

Angel of Rain and Fire (Acadia)

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 (Acadia)

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

Liquid Fire (Lassen)

He lights--if it were land that ever burn'd With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, And such appear'd in hue as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side Of thund'ring Ætna, whose combustible And fuell'd entrails, thence conceiving fire, Sublim'd with mineral fury, aid the winds, -John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book I, 1667