138 TO A SKYLARK. We look before and after, 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, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness The world should listen then as I am listening now! P. B. Shelley. ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. 139 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. I. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 2. O for a draught of vintage, that hath been Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 3. Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 140 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; And leaden-eyed despairs; Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 4. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 5. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 6. Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a muséd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. Now more than ever seems it rich to die, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain- 7. 141 Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 8. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Was it a vision, or a waking dream? F. Keats. 142 TO THE CUCKOO. TO THE CUCKOO. O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard, O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, While I am lying on the grass, I hear thee babbling to the vale And unto me thou bring'st a tale Thrice welcome, darling of the spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery. The same whom in my school-boy days Which made me look a thousand ways To seek thee did I often rove |