英国诗人珀西·比希·雪莱(Percy Bysshe Shelley)的最后一首诗是《西风颂》(Ode to the West Wind),这首诗创作于1819年,是他最著名的作品之一。以下是这首诗的全文:
O wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
We tire of all the ages, of all the years,
We hasten to the close.
Act, act in me and I will be the agent;
The living record of thy voice.
Scatter, as from an unextinguishable hearth
A shatter'd cinders that lie cold and dead,
Toss them against the winter heaven, blow
Amid the winter snows, and scatter, scatter
Amid the winter air.
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the grave and stern-beat sea, throw
My heart into the West, and, after sound,
The sense of being in another sphere.
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.
To tire the heart of the world.
Be thou, the wind, that shall be my burying;
Thou art my soul, the wind that shall unbind
My avenging soul from its mortal part;
Like leaves along the sky thou shall unroll
The living thoughts of my existence,
And let them bloom like flowers.
And if my thoughts should light upon thy beak,
I will not drive thee back, I will not fling
My shadow over thee, but let the sun
Shine on thee through the leaves so that I may
Read my own epitaph.
The leaf-blast with the rain-wet heavy light
Of closing night, falls from the boughs of trees,
With a sigh for the pain it brings, and a song
For the beauty it departs from, as it departs,
As when the heart of a lover is torn
And a sigh goes forth from his hollow breast,
Under the moon, to the moon, and no man's heard.
So 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.
To tire the heart of the world.
Be thou, the wind, that shall be my burying;
For now I see in the moon a face;
And in the moon I see what I have seen
In the dark ground, beneath the waning moon,
And in the hollow of the earth, and in
The flowing water.
The poem is a dramatic expression of the poet's longing for freedom and change, and it also reflects his belief in the transformative power of nature and the wind. Unfortunately, Percy Bysshe Shelley died in a boating accident in Italy on July 8, 1822, at the age of 29, before he could see the full publication of his works.