Though to my soul ability be less
Than 'tis to thee, O sweet anemone.
Teach me the secret of thy innocence,
That in simplicity I may grow wise,
Asking from Art no other recompense

Than the approval of her own just eyes;
So may I rise to some fair eminence,

Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies.

Teach me these things, through whose high knowledge, I,When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins, And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie

In that vast house, common to serfs and thanes,

I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,

For beauty born of beauty

TO A SKYLARK

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 overflowed.

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 aërial hue

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

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 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 hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

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 of 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.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

THE SKYLARK

BIRD of the wilderness,

Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud
Far in the downy cloud,

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

Oh, to abide in the desert with thee !

TO THE CUCKOO

O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice;

O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?

While I am lying on the grass

Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.
Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,

Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

JAMES HOGG.

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
I listened to; that cry

Which made me look a thousand ways,
In bush and tree and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove

Through woods and on the green;

And thou wert still a hope, a love;

Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget

That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial fairy place:

That is fit home for thee.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk :
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth !
O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth ;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

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 ; 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,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

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: