One Response to “Sonic Youth giddy up on out West”

1. Robotic Arm on Jul 29th, 2009 at 10:53 pm

   oh yeah.

   Ode to the West Wind
   by Percy Bysshe Shelley

   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,
   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
   (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,
   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

   Of some fierce Maenad, 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
   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,
   Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

   Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
   And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
   Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

   All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
   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

   Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey 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

   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
   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 unextinguished hearth
   Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
   Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

   The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
   If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Leave a Reply