TO A SKYLARK HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, 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 daylight 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 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, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace-tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, 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 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves: Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, 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 chant, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What object 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, 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 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 that 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 should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, 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, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. ODE TO THE WEST WIND 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, The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear! III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; The impulse of thy strength, only less free The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 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. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, |