Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded 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

[view :

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives

[thieves.

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged

Sound of vernal1 showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd 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,2

Or triumphal chaunt,3

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt

4

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

1 vernal-of Spring.

2 hymeneal of marriage.

triumphal chant-song of victory.

♦ vaunt-pretence or boast,

THE 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 daylight,

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

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,1 1
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

[flowed.

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over

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.

1 See notes on Hymn to Diana, page 78.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded 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

[view:

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives

[thieves.

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged

Sound of vernal1 showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd 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,2

3

Or triumphal chaunt,3

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt 1—

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

1 vernal-of Spring.

2 hymeneal of marriage.

8 triumphal chant-song of victory.

4 vaunt-pretence or boast,

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.1

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 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 joys we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful 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: 1792-1822.

(See page 84.)

1 satiety-surfeit: see note on p. 47.

THE LARK AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

'TIS sweet to hear the merry lark,
That bids a blithe good-morrow;
But sweeter to hark, in the twinkling dark,
To the soothing song of sorrow.
O Nightingale ! what doth she ail?
And is she sad or jolly?

For ne'er on earth was sound of mirth

So like to melancholy.

The merry lark, he soars on high,
No worldly thought o'ertakes him;
He sings aloud to the clear blue sky,
And the daylight that awakes him.
As sweet a lay, as loud, as gay,
The nightingale is trilling;
With feeling bliss, no less than his,
Her little heart is thrilling.

Yet ever and anon, a sigh

Peers through her lavish mirth;
For the lark's bold song is of the sky,
And her's is of the earth.

By day and night she tunes her lay,
To drive away all sorrow;

For bliss, alas! to-night must pass,
And woe may come to-morrow.

Hartley Coleridge: 1796-1849.

Hartley was the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He had much poetical genius, but little steadiness of purpose, and produced only one volume of verse. His chief prose work was Lives of Northern Worthies.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate1 to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards 2 had sunk :

1 opiate a sleeping-draught.

2 Lethe-a river of the infernal

regions whose waters were said to cause forgetfulness of the past.