501. To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822)

  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 brightening,

  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 overflow’d.

  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 embower’d

  In its own green leaves,

  By warm winds deflower’d,

  Till the scent it gives

  Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

  Sound of vernal 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

  Or triumphal chaunt

  Match’d 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!