October 18 The Harvard Classics, fifteen minutes a day
“If Winter Comes”
From the title of a recently popular novel, we know that one prominent fiction writer of to-day was inspired by the verses of Shelley. Many others have also felt the stirring vigor of his poetry. What is your reaction?
From the 1930 Reading Guide
Poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Page 829 opens with the last stanza of a poem begun on page 828; the reading starts with the next poem, “To a Skylark”.
501 To a Skylark
HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit!Bird thou never wert,That from heaven, or near it,Pourest thy full heartIn profuse strains of unpremeditated art
Higher still and higherFrom the earth thou springestLike a cloud of fire;The blue deep thou wingest,And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightningOf the sunken sunO’er which clouds are brightening,Thou dost float and run,Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple evenMelts around thy flight;Like a star of heavenIn the broad daylightThou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:
Keen as are the arrowsOf that silver sphere,Whose intense lamp narrowsIn the white dawn clearUntil we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and airWith thy voice is loud,As, when night is bare,From one lonely cloudThe moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow’d.
What thou art we know not;What is most like thee?From rainbow clouds there flow notDrops so bright to seeAs from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a poet hiddenIn the light of thought,Singing hymns unbidden,Till the world is wroughtTo sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maidenIn a palace tower,Soothing her love-ladenSoul in secret hourWith music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
Like a glow-worm goldenIn a dell of dew,Scattering unbeholdenIts aerial hueAmong the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
Like a rose embower’dIn its own green leaves,By warm winds deflower’d,Till the scent it givesMakes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.
Sound of vernal showersOn the twinkling grass,Rain-awaken’d flowers,All that ever wasJoyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,What sweet thoughts are thine:I have never heardPraise of love or wineThat panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymenealOr triumphal chauntMatch’d with thine, would be allBut an empty vaunt—A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountainsOf thy happy strain?What fields, or waves, or mountains?What shapes of sky or plain?What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyanceLanguor cannot be:Shadow of annoyanceNever came near thee:Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.
Waking or asleepThou of death must deemThings more true and deepThan we mortals dream,Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scornHate, and pride, and fear;If we were things bornNot to shed a tear,I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measuresOf delightful sound,Better than all treasuresThat in books are found,Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladnessThat thy brain must know,Such harmonious madnessFrom my lips would flowThe world should listen then, as I am listening now!
502 Love’s Philosophy
THE fountains mingle with the riverAnd the rivers with the ocean,The winds of heaven mix for everWith a sweet emotion;Nothing in the world is single,All things by a law divineIn one another’s being mingle—Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heavenAnd the waves clasp one another;No sister-flower would be forgivenIf it disdain’d its brother:And the sunlight clasps the earth,And the moonbeams kiss the sea—What are all these kissings worth,If thou kiss not me?
503 To the Night
SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,Spirit of Night!Out of the misty eastern caveWhere, all the long and lone daylight,Thou wovest dreams of joy and fearWhich make thee terrible and dear,—Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle grayStar-inwrought!Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,Kiss her until she be wearied out:Then wander o’er city and sea and land,Touching all with thine opiate wand—Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn,I sigh’d for thee;When light rode high, and the dew was gone,And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,And the weary Day turn’d to his restLingering like an unloved guest,I sigh’d for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and criedWouldst thou me?Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,Murmur’d like a noon-tide beeShall I nestle near thy side?Wouldst thou me?—And I repliedNo, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,Soon, too soon—Sleep will come when thou art fled;Of neither would I ask the boonI ask of thee, belovéd Night—Swift be thine approaching flight,Come soon, soon!
504 Ode to the West Wind
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thouWho chariotest to their dark wintry bedThe wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the spring shall blowHer 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!
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 spreadOn the blue surface of thine airy surge,Like the bright hair uplifted from the headOf some fierce Maenad, ev’n from the dim vergeOf the horizon to the zenith’s height—The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirgeOf the dying year, to which this closing nightWill be the dome of a vast sepulchre,Vaulted with all thy congregated might,Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphereBlack rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreamsThe blue Mediterranean, where he layLull’d by the coil of his crystalline streams,Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,And saw in sleep old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave’s intenser day,All overgrown with azure moss and flowersSo sweet, the sense faints picturing them! ThouFor whose path the Atlantic’s level powersCleave themselves into chasms, while far belowThe sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wearThe sapless foliage of the ocean, knowThy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fearAnd tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
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 shareThe impulse of thy strength, only less freeThan Thou, O uncontrollable! If evenI were as in my boyhood, and could beThe comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speedScarce seem’d a vision, I would ne’er have strivenAs 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’dOne too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, ev’n as the forest is:What if my leaves are falling like its own!The tumult of thy mighty harmoniesWill 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 universeLike wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;And, by the incantation of this verse,Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!Be through my lips to unawaken’d earthThe trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
“Written Among the Euganean Hills” begins low on page 835 and runs on for several pages; the reading stops before it.
Volume 41, pages 829–835 · See the scanned page on archive.org
This is the reading for October 18 in Fifteen Minutes a Day: The Reading Guide (1930 edition), page 8. There the assignment reads “Vol. 41, pp. 829–835.” Read it in the guide.