Pave with swift victory The steps of Liberty, Whom Britons own to be Immortal Queen.

II

See, she comes throned on high, On swift Eternity,

God save the Queen!

Millions on millions wait
Firm, rapid, and elate,
On her majestic state!
God save the Queen!

III

She is thine own pure soul
Moulding the mighty whole, -
God save the Queen!
She is thine own deep love
Rained down from heaven above, -
Wherever she rest or move,

God save our Queen!

IV

Wilder her enemies

In their own dark disguise, -
God save our Queen!
All earthly things that dare
Her sacred name to bear,
Strip them, as kings are, bare;
God save the Queen!

V

Be her eternal throne
Built in our hearts alone,

God save the Queen!
Let the oppressor hold
Canopied seats of gold;
She sits enthroned of old
O'er our hearts Queen.

VI

Lips touched by seraphim
Breathe out the choral hymn,
God save the Queen!
Sweet as if angels sang,
Loud as that trumpet's clang,
Wakening the world's dead gang,
God save the Queen!

ODE TO HEAVEN

Composed as early as December, and published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Mrs.

Shelley writes as follows: 'Shelley was a disciple of the immaterial philosophy of Berkeley. This theory gave unity and grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field for his imagination. The creation, such as it was perceived by his mind -a unit in immensity, was slight and narrow compared with the interminable forms of thought that might exist beyond, to be perceived perhaps hereafter by his own mind; all of which are perceptible to other minds that fill the universe, not of space in the material sense, but of infinity in the immaterial one. Such ideas are, in some degree, developed in his poem entitled Heaven: and when he makes one of the interlocutors exclaim,

"Peace! the abyss is wreathed in scorn

Of thy presumption, atom-born"

he expresses his despair of being able to conceive, far less express, all of variety, majesty, and beauty, which is veiled from our imperfect senses in the unknown realm, the mystery of which his poetic vision sought in vain to penetrate.'

CHORUS OF SPIRITS

FIRST SPIRIT

PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!

Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then,
Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome

Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;

Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;

And green worlds that glide along; And swift stars with flashing tresses; And icy moons most cold and bright, And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven for thou art the abode

Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away;

Thou remainest such alway.

SECOND SPIRIT

Thou art but the mind's first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;

But the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam
From the shadow of a dream!

THIRD SPIRIT

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn At your presumption, atom-born!

What is heaven? and what are ye Who its brief expanse inherit?

What are suns and spheres which flee
With the instinct of that Spirit

Of which ye are but a part?
Drops which Nature's mighty heart
Drives through thinnest veins. Depart!

What is heaven? a globe of dew,
Filling in the morning new

Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken

On an unimagined world;

Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless, are furled

In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

AN EXHORTATION

Shelley writes to Mrs. Gisborne, May 8, 1820, concerning this poem: As an excuse for mine and Mary's incurable stupidity, I send a little thing about poets, which is itself a kind of excuse for Wordsworth.' It was published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820.

CHAMELEONS feed on light and air;
Poets' food is love and fame;
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,

Would they ever change their hue As the light chameleons do, Suiting it to every ray

Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth, As chameleons might be,

Hidden from their early birth

In a cave beneath the sea. Where light is, chameleons change; Where love is not, poets do; Fame is love disguised; if few Find either, never think it strange That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind.
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
Oh, refuse the boon!

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

Shelley describes in a note the circumstances under which this ode was composed: "This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.

'The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it.' It was published with Prome theus Unbound, 1820.

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 winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow