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Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed-ocean side?

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— The desert and illimitable air,

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

William Cullen Bryant

232

HALL

TO A SKYLARK

TAIL 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 light'ning

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

e 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

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

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

th music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glowworm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

hong 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

kes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingèd 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 Hymenæal,

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;

r sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.1

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now not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful soundBetter than all treasures

That in books are found

y 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,

e world should listen then-as I am listening now.

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Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! hark-what pain!

The most beautiful songs are those most laden with despair."

ed de Musset.

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