Familiar with the waves and free
As if their own white foam were he,
His heart upon the heart of ocean
Lay learning all its mystic motion,
And throbbing to the throbbing sea.

And such a brightness in his eye,
As if the ocean and the sky
Within him had lit up and nursed
A soul God gave him not at first
To comprehend their majesty.

We were not cruel, yet did sunder
His white wing from the blue waves under,
And bound it, while his fearless eyes
Shone up to ours in calm surprise,
As deeming us some ocean wonder!

We bore our ocean bird unto
A grassy place, where he might view
The flowers that curtsey to the bees,
The waving of the tall green trees,
The falling of the silver dew.

But flowers of earth were pale to him
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim;
And when earth's dew around him lay
He thought of ocean's wingèd spray,
And his eye waxèd sad and dim.

The green trees round him only made
A prison with their darksome shade;
And dropped his wing, and mournèd he
For his own boundless glittering sea—
Albeit he knew not they could fade.

Then One her gladsome face did bring,
Her gentle voice's murmuring,
In ocean's stead his heart to move
And teach him what was human love:
He thought it a strange, mournful thing.

To a Skylark

He lay down in his grief to die
(First looking to the sea-like sky
That hath no waves!), because, alas!
Our human touch did on him pass,
And, with our touch, our agony.

1519

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861]

TO A SKYLARK

Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;

Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,

With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find

That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary
And to-day my heart is weary;

Had I now the wings of a Fairy,

Up to thee would I fly.

There is madness about thee, and joy divine

In that song of thine;

Lift me, guide me high and high

To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning

Thou art laughing and scorning;

Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest.
And, though little troubled with sloth,

Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth

To be such a traveler as I.

Happy, happy Liver,

With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver,
Joy and jollity be with us both!

Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven,
Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind;
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind,
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,

I, with my fate contented, will plod on,

And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done. William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

TO A SKYLARK

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!
William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

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

O to abide in the desert with thee!

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

The Skylark

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

O to abide in the desert with thee!

1521

James Hogg [1770-1835]

THE SKYLARK

How the blithe Lark runs up the golden stair

That leans through cloudy gates from Heaven to Earth,

And all alone in the empyreal air

Fills it with jubilant sweet songs of mirth;

How far he seems, how far

With the light upon his wings,

Is it a bird, or star

That shines, and sings?

What matter if the days be dark and frore,
That sunbeam tells of other days to be,
And singing in the light that floods him o'er
In joy he overtakes Futurity;
Under cloud-arches vast

He peeps, and sees behind
Great Summer coming fast
Adown the wind!

And now he dives into a rainbow's rivers,

In streams of gold and purple he is drowned, Shrilly the arrows of his song he shivers,

As though the stormy drops were turned to sound;

And now he issues through,

He scales a cloudy tower,
Faintly, like falling dew,

His fast notes shower.

Let every wind be hushed, that I may hear
The wondrous things he tells the World below,
Things that we dream of he is watching near,
Hopes that we never dreamed he would bestow;
Alas! the storm hath rolled
Back the gold gates again,
Or surely he had told

All Heaven to men!

So the victorious Poet sings alone,

And fills with light his solitary home,

And through that glory sees new worlds foreshown,
And hears high songs, and triumphs yet to come;
He waves the air of Time

With thrills of golden chords,
And makes the world to climb
On linked words.

What if his hair be gray, his eyes be dim,

If wealth forsake him, and if friends be cold, Wonder unbars her thousand gates to him, Truth never fails, nor Beauty waxes old; More than he tells his eyes

Behold, his spirit hears, Of grief, and joy, and sighs 'Twixt joy and tears.

Blest is the man who with the sound of song
Can charm away the heartache, and forget
The frost of Penury, and the stings of Wrong,
And drown the fatal whisper of Regret!