As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud 30 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over flowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see 35 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:— Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought 40 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour 45 With music sweet as love which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue 50 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 55 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves, Sound of vernal showers All that ever was, 60 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 65 That panteth forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt 70 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? 75 What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? 80 Thou lovest, With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: 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, 85 Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: With some pain is fraught; 90 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, 95 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, 100 Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know; 105 The world should listen then as I am listening now. (1-15) Read Mrs. Shelley's "Note on the Poems of 1820" in regard to the composition of this ode. In (6-10) note the high vowel (i) which causes us to tilt our heads in watching the flight of the lark, and the sibilants that aid the ear in catching the rustling of its wings. The poet does not describe the lark's plumage as Emerson does in portraying his snow-bird in "The Titmouse." To Shelley the lark is "an unbodied joy." (16-70) In (21-25) count the number of high vowels which increase in tension to denote that the song of the lark is almost beyond hearing; that the soaring has brought the bird to a tremendous height. Note the simile interpreting Shelley's mission in English poetry. In (76–85), what lines in Keats' "Ode To A Nightingale " are echoed? Cf. (86-90) with I., VII. and VIII. of Keats' ode, and analyse the similitudes. What lines of Byron are recalled by (88–89)? (91–105) Observe that Shelley desires the lyrical powers of the lark. Compare Coleridge's desire for the symphony of the Abyssinian's voice and dulcimer; and Edgar A. Poe's desire for the lute music of Israfel's. Analyse this finest lyric in our language by applying the touchstone of these lines: The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, From the sphere of our sorrow. Scan Stanza XVI (76–80). To In this poem each stanza seems to be a passionate outburst forming a full note of the lark's. The first four lines are composed of staccato trills, forming a half-note until by the metre of the fifth line there is a lingering trill that completes the stanzaic note with unsurpassable sweetness. It can be plausibly urged that Shelley, on the eventful evening of the composition of this lyric near Leghorn, while the warbling lark ascended perpendicularly, stood nervously writing the jerky trimeters; and that, when the bird gave prolonged trills as it zigzagged rests for easier upward movements, Shelley slid his pencil accordingly, doubling the trimeters into Alexandrines. Shelley conveys distance by his Alexandrines as Keats does in his one iambic hexameter in "The Ode To A Nightingale." The dash in (105) seems to indicate that the lark's voice is no longer heard; that the poet is listening in vain, sobbing out, instead of the bird, the pathetic note of all the staccatos and Alexandrines in the ode. Shelley leaves the lark singing at heaven's gate. Cf. Wordsworth's "Skylark,” where the bird is brought back to its nest. Scan stanza four of Part I. of "The Sensitive Plant." What would the poets of the Classical School have thought of such a metrical system? Scan (21-30) of “The Cloud." THOMAS CAMPBELL 1777-1844 The best singer of war in a race and language which are those of the best singers and not the worst fighters in the history of the world, — in the race of Nelson and the language of Shakespeare. — Saintsbury. Optional Poems Ye Mariners Of England — Hohenlinden. The Soldier's Dream. A Thought Suggested By The New Year. Drink Ye To Her That Each Loves Best Few, few shall part, where many meet! 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, -Hohenlinden. - Lochiel's Warning. BATTLE OF THE BALTIC I Of Nelson and the North, Sing the glorious day's renown |