miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear air, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, "Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth!"

Thus speaks good, old Isaak Walton. Let us now hear Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose ode "To a Skylark" is worthy of the bird itself.

TO A SKYLARK.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still, and higher,

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning

Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven

In the broad day-light;

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

SONGS OF SKYLARKS.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it needed not.

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower;

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

209

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass :

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine;

I have never heard,

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal

Or triumphal chaunt,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

P

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear, keen joyance,

Languor cannot be;
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught:

Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever could come near.

Better than all measures

Of delight and sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then as I am listening now.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

SONGS OF SKYLARKS.

211

TO A SKY-LARK.

Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest, which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

To the last point of vision, and beyond,

Mount, daring warbler !—that love-prompted strain
("Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond)
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain :
Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing
All independent of the leafy spring.

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood,-
A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine:

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

WORDSWORTH.

THE SKYLARK.

Bird of the wilderness,

Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

Oh to abide in the desert with thee !

Wild is thy lay, and loud,
Far in the downy cloud,

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen,
O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing away!

Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place,

Oh to abide in the desert with thee!

HOGG.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the west, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring: it flows silently
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

And hark! the nightingale begins its song,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!

A melancholy bird? O idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

-But some night-wand'ring man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale

Of his own sorrows,) he and such as he

First named these notes a melancholy strain :

And many a poet echoes the conceit;

Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme

When he had better far have stretch'd his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moonlight, to the influxes

Of shapes, and sounds, and shifting elements,
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in nature's immortality,
A venerable thing! and so his song
Should make all nature lovelier, and itself
Be loved, like nature !-But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deep'ning twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still
Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs