Time for Poetry

Maybe it's because I've been reading Romantic poetry for the past month and I find these guys (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley) fascinating or maybe it's because I can relate to this poem. Or it could be that I like it because I understand it and its inspiration--he saw a storm approaching, watched it, and finally wrote again, marking the end of his grieving period for his 3 year old son that had recently died. No matter what, I like these two sections of this poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  

from "Ode to the West Wind"

IV.

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 share

 

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 skyey speed

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

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

 

V. 

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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

 

Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unwakened earth

 

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?