Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

252 SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. [VIII.
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 unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy ! O Wind,
If W' inter comes, can Spring be far behind?'
This ode ends with some vigour, some hope ; but
that is not usual with Shelley. Every one must have
noticed how almost habitually his intensest lyrics —
those which have started with the fullest swing of
rapture — die down, before they close, into a wail of
despair. It is as though, when the strong gush of
emotion had spent itself, there was no more behind,
nothing to fall back upon, but blank emptiness and
desolation. It is this that makes Shelley's poetry so
unspeakably sad — sad with a hopeless sorrow that is
like none other. You feel as though he were a wan-
derer who has lost his way hopelessly In the wilderness
of a blank universe. True is Carlyle's well-known
saying, ' his cry is like the infinite inarticulate wailing of
forsaken infants.' In the wail of his desolation there are
many tones — some wild and weird, some defiant, some
full of desponding pathos.