Ode to the West Wind: The Sixth Canto

Ode to the West Wind: The Sixth Canto
(A continuation in the spirit of Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Original closing (Canto 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 wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
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?"

— — —

VI.

It came — the Spring of which the prophet sang!
Not soft, nor draped in blossoms meek and pale,
But wild — with thunder's voice the heavens rang,

And from the West there swept a fiercer gale
Than Autumn ever conjured from the deep,
Tearing the frozen shroud, the winter's veil,

From mountains where the ancient glaciers sleep.
The seeds, those wingèd emissaries of change,
Stirred in the dark earth's long-enchanted keep,

And burst through frost with fury hot and strange,
As though the dead thoughts scattered by the blast
Had found, in burial, a wider range —

For every spark the West Wind downward cast
Became a conflagration in the soil,
A revolution rooted deep and vast,

That no crowned Winter's tyranny could foil.
The roots ran deep as rivers underground,
Nourished by centuries of silent toil,

And where the poet's ashes touched the ground,
New voices rose like green shoots from the mould —
A thousand tongues where once was but one sound,

A thousand fires where once one ember rolled.
O Wind! Thou democratic instrument!
Thy breath makes free what monarchs would enfold,

For every chain is but a word unspent,
And every prison but a verse unsung,
And tyranny — a poem never meant

To reach the lips of those kept mute and young.
But now the trumpet sounds across the plain!
In every land, in every age and tongue,

The prophecy reverberates again:
The Spring arrives not gentle, but ablaze,
A lion cloaked in petals and in rain,

That shakes the pillared halls of ancient days
And scatters thrones like leaves before the storm.
O West Wind! Through the world's enshadowed maze,

Thy breath persists — immortal, fierce, and warm.
What Spring has come can never be undone;
The ice retreats, the frozen rivers form

New tributaries toward the rising sun.
And I, who took the fallen trumpet's call,
Now pass it forth — the song is never done,

For one voice fades, and yet it speaks through all.
If Winter comes, it comes to feed the root;
If empires rise, they rise only to fall —

And from their dust, the Spring sends up its shoot.
Be thou, O Wind, the breath that never dies!
Be thou the storm that renders tyrants mute!

Scatter these words like seeds across the skies,
That where they land, new voices shall take wing —
For every Spring that blooms, a Winter flies,

And every tongue that dares to speak shall sing.