To a Skylark

Darker are the abodes

Of Kings, though his be poor,
While Fancies, like the Gods,

Pass. through his door.

Singing thou scalest Heaven upon thy wings,
Thou liftest a glad heart into the skies;
He maketh his own sunrise, while he sings,
And turns the dusty Earth to Paradise;
I see thee sail along

Far up the sunny streams,

Unseen, I hear his song,

I see his dreams.

1523

Frederick Tennyson [1807-1898]

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 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,

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 aerial 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:

To a Skylark

1525

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.

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 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,
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]

THE STORMY PETREL

A THOUSAND miles from land are we,
Tossing about on the roaring sea,—
From billow to bounding billow cast,
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast.
The sails are scattered abroad like weeds;
The strong masts shake like quivering reeds;
The mighty cables and iron chains,

The hull, which all earthly strength disdains,—
They strain and they crack; and hearts like stone
Their natural, hard, proud strength disown.

Up and down!-up and down!

From the base of the wave to the billow's crown,

And amidst the flashing and feathery foam
The stormy petrel finds a home,—

A home, if such a place may be

For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,

On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,

And only seeketh her rocky lair

To a Swallow

To warm her young, and to teach them to spring
At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!

O'er the deep!-o'er the deep!

1527

Where the whale and the shark and the swordfish sleep,

Outflying the blast and the driving rain,

The petrel telleth her tale-in vain;

For the mariner curseth the warning bird

Which bringeth him news of the storm unheard!

Ah! thus does the prophet, of good or ill,
Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still;
Yet he ne'er falters, so, petrel, spring

Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wing!

Bryan Waller Procter [1787-1874]

THE FIRST SWALLOW

THE gorse is yellow on the heath,

The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
The oaks are budding, and, beneath,
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath, of May.

The welcome guest of settled Spring,
The swallow, too, has come at last;
Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hailed her as she passed.

Come, summer visitant, attach

To my reed roof your nest of clay,
And let my ear your music catch,
Low twittering underneath the thatch

At the gray dawn of day.

Charlotte Smith [1749-1806]

TO A SWALLOW BUILDING UNDER OUR EAVES

THOU too hast traveled, little fluttering thing,-
Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing