TO A SKYLARK. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, 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? 137 138 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; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 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: And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 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, Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— 7. 141 Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! 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! Was it a vision, or a waking dream? J. Keats. |