Sunday, October 29, 2017

not so silent Sunday with only one picture





Not the most artistic picture I have ever taken, but how often do you see panseys blooming in sub-freezing weather.  Even though I was cold my heart was warmed.  A sign of an open winter...or just one very determined pansy, and did it really matter. 
The year is turning from light to dark, the green and growing world has turned brown and dormant. A reminder that it will turn green and growing again.



Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1792–1822
  
 Ode to the West Wind
  

I


O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
  Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
  Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou         5
  Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
  Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
  Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill  10
(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!
II


Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
  15
  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 spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
  Like the bright hair uplifted from the head  20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
  Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
  Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,  25
  Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III


Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
  The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,  30
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
  Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
  Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers  35
  So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
  Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
  The sapless foliage of the ocean, know  40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
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  45
  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 seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
  As 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'd  55
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,  60
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,  65
  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?




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