19
[DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI]
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a love-thought, thro' me, Death!
And take a life that wearies me.
Leghorn, June 7, 1806. First published in Letters of S. T. C., 1875, ii. 499, n. 1. Now collected for the first time. Adapted from Percy's version of 'Waly, Waly, Love be bonny', st. 3.
Marti'mas wind when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaves aff the tree?
O gentle death, when wilt thou cum?
For of my life I am wearie.
20
As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood,
That crests its head with clouds, beneath the flood
Feeds its deep roots, and with the bulging flank
Of its wide base controls the fronting bank—
(By the slant current's pressure scoop'd away
The fronting bank becomes a foam-piled bay)
High in the Fork the uncouth Idol knits
His channel'd brow; low murmurs stir by fits
And dark below the horrid Faquir sits—
An Horror from its broad Head's branching wreath
Broods o'er the rude Idolatry beneath—
1806-7. Now first published from an MS.