Sunday 2 November 2014

Poem for the day, for Autumn


Here is my poem for today. It is about Autumn and is by Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822). It is about the West wind. Shelley expresses all that we might feel in the Autumn. The wind blows the leaves to the ground and scatters the seeds that will grow in Spring. We know Spring will come around and can see the Autumn as a necessary preparation for Winter . Shelley talks about the Mediterranean and Atlantic seas in their Autumn dress. It is a long poem and I am just going to write a few of the verses. I hope you like it.

Ode to the 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, O hear!

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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 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: O hear!

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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.?





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