“Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On 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.”
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Shelley
Pisa, Italy, 1822
1. Screaming thunder! Loud as the tortured damned,
Terrible Tempest that howls with hell’s fire!
To skies as high and black as dæmon pyre!
Heaven’s sky above, painted like the abyss,
Come at last to punish me for my sins!
Go one! Strike me by lightning, kill with winds.
Thy epic storm, as great as the one Posidon sent
Odysseus and kin, I’ll not give in!
I’ll fight your towe’d seas without repent.
Your seas that toss, shake, and throw the schooner,
Rock, toss, and throw me to the sides like sand,
I, gripping with Herculean command.
Your awesome power, refusing absolve,
Consumed the schooner like a God enraged,
Deep below to a watery dissolve.
2. I’ll struggle, fight, and thrash against the wave.
I’ll still resist the pull of fate’s cold hand.
I’ll yet to succumb to my dark, silent, grave.
I feel your ancient power, strong as earth’s
Tallest moor, choke me with sea’s salt’d death
And rip me from life’s tumultuous breath.
Is this all wretched life shall make of me?
He who died a sailor’s death, in a voiceless
Tune? With no poet’s song that I possess?
I’d beg for Euterpe’s sacred second
Chance to make me her remember’d vessel,
Protect my mortal poems, I beckon!
Pulled, like an anchor to a bottom space,
Sunk. Then, a vision, should my hope infuse,
She hath come, the Intellectual muse!
3. Spirit of beauty, that doth consecrate,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled.
For in my vision’s eye, upon thy brow,
I vowed I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine- have I not kept my vow?
Muse of literature and inspiration,
Thee, who gives to nightingale's song and wing,
Spirit of nature, storms, forests, and brings
Creativity which poetry sings,
Mother of earth and sky and fire and water.
Why have thee come to me again? What rings
In your ear for me to hear? What wisdom
Doth thee impart? Tell me, I beg you, speak.
She said to me in a voice clear, though weak
4. “I’ll mourn thee at Apollo’s high altar
And weep for ye each time I play my lyre,
‘For Percy Shelley lives, I keep his fire.”
She took me in her marble, lucent arms,
As she lay death’s kiss on my frigid cheek,
I felt myself dissolved from earthly harms.
Far, far below the piercing, infinite sky,
As I breathed in sea’s silence deep, the last
Upon living earth’s caste.
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Shelley
Pisa, Italy, 1822
1. Screaming thunder! Loud as the tortured damned,
Terrible Tempest that howls with hell’s fire!
To skies as high and black as dæmon pyre!
Heaven’s sky above, painted like the abyss,
Come at last to punish me for my sins!
Go one! Strike me by lightning, kill with winds.
Thy epic storm, as great as the one Posidon sent
Odysseus and kin, I’ll not give in!
I’ll fight your towe’d seas without repent.
Your seas that toss, shake, and throw the schooner,
Rock, toss, and throw me to the sides like sand,
I, gripping with Herculean command.
Your awesome power, refusing absolve,
Consumed the schooner like a God enraged,
Deep below to a watery dissolve.
2. I’ll struggle, fight, and thrash against the wave.
I’ll still resist the pull of fate’s cold hand.
I’ll yet to succumb to my dark, silent, grave.
I feel your ancient power, strong as earth’s
Tallest moor, choke me with sea’s salt’d death
And rip me from life’s tumultuous breath.
Is this all wretched life shall make of me?
He who died a sailor’s death, in a voiceless
Tune? With no poet’s song that I possess?
I’d beg for Euterpe’s sacred second
Chance to make me her remember’d vessel,
Protect my mortal poems, I beckon!
Pulled, like an anchor to a bottom space,
Sunk. Then, a vision, should my hope infuse,
She hath come, the Intellectual muse!
3. Spirit of beauty, that doth consecrate,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled.
For in my vision’s eye, upon thy brow,
I vowed I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine- have I not kept my vow?
Muse of literature and inspiration,
Thee, who gives to nightingale's song and wing,
Spirit of nature, storms, forests, and brings
Creativity which poetry sings,
Mother of earth and sky and fire and water.
Why have thee come to me again? What rings
In your ear for me to hear? What wisdom
Doth thee impart? Tell me, I beg you, speak.
She said to me in a voice clear, though weak
4. “I’ll mourn thee at Apollo’s high altar
And weep for ye each time I play my lyre,
‘For Percy Shelley lives, I keep his fire.”
She took me in her marble, lucent arms,
As she lay death’s kiss on my frigid cheek,
I felt myself dissolved from earthly harms.
Far, far below the piercing, infinite sky,
As I breathed in sea’s silence deep, the last
Upon living earth’s caste.
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