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 50
Scarce seemed 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 chained and bowed 55
One too like thee:  tameless, and swift, and proud.

5. 
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, 60
Sweet though in sadness.  Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit!  Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! 
And, by the incantation of this verse, 65

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy!  O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 70

***

AN EXHORTATION.

[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.  Dated ‘Pisa, April, 1820’ in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry), but assigned by Mrs. Shelley to 1819.]

Chameleons feed on light and air: 
Poets’ food is love and fame: 
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they, 5
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth, 10
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
in a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change: 
Where love is not, poets do:  15
Fame is love disguised:  if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet’s free and heavenly mind:  20
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are. 
Children of a sunnier star, 25
Spirits from beyond the moon,
Oh, refuse the boon!

***

THE INDIAN SERENADE.

[Published, with the title, “Song written for an Indian Air”, in “The Liberal”, 2, 1822.  Reprinted ("Lines to an Indian Air”) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.  The poem is included in the Harvard manuscript book, and there is a description by Robert Browning of an autograph copy presenting some variations from the text of 1824.  See Leigh Hunt’s “Correspondence”, 2, pages 264-8.]