Percy Bysshe Shelley

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  Ode to the West Wind
  
  
  IO 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
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  Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
  
  
  The wingèd 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
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  (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!
  
  
  IIThou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
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  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 airy surge,
  
  Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
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  Of some fierce Mænad, 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,
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  Vaulted with all thy congregated might
  
  
  Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
  
  Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
  
  
  IIIThou who didst waken from his summer dreams
  
  The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
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  Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
  
  
  Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
  
  And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
  
  Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
  
  
  All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
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  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
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  Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
  
  And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
  
  
  IVIf 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
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  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
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  Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
  
  
  As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
  
  O! 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
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  One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
  
  
  VMake 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,
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  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,
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  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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  Percy Bysshe Shelley, ou simplesmente Percy Shelley, nasceu dia 4 de agosto de 1792 em Sussex, Inglaterra. Poeta, escritor, tradutor e ensaísta, Shelley foi consagrado como um dos mais importantes nomes do Romantismo mundial e um dos princípios representantes da poesia lírica inglesa, cuja busca apaixonada pelo amor pessoal e pela justiça social foi gradualmente canalizada de ações observáveis a poemas que o levaram a uma alta posição na literatura inglesa.