Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains; and, thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
With the longer poems went a brilliant cascade of shorter lyrical pieces. To name them is to mention some of the sweetest English lyrics. The constantly quoted Skylark and Cloud are among them; so are some exquisite songs, such as Lines to an Indian Air, Music, when soft voices die, On a Faded Violet, To Night, and the longer occasional pieces—for example, Lines written among the Euganean Hills, and the Letter to Maria Gisborne. Of his many beautiful odes, the most remarkable is To the West Wind. The stanzas have the elemental rush of the wind itself, and the conclusion, where Shelley sees a parallel to himself, is the most remarkable of all:
Make me thy lyre, ev’n 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,