Six Centuries of English Poetry Part 9

REFERENCES: Swinburne's _Studies and Essays_; Shairp's _Studies in Poetry_; Carlyle's _Reminiscences_; Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_; De Quincey's _Essays_; _Coleridge_ (English Men of Letters), by H. D.

Traill; Hazlitt's _English Poets_; Hunt's _Imagination and Fancy_; Chorley's _Authors of England_; Walter Pater's _Apprecia_.

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley.

TO A SKYLARK

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse{1} strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still, and higher, From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The deep blue thou wingest,{2} And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun,{3} 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{4} 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{5} 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpa.s.s.

Teach us, sprite{6} 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,{7} Or triumphal chaunt, 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, 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 Langour 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:{8} 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 delight and 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.

NOTES.

This is perhaps the most perfect lyric of its kind in the English language. Every verse is worthy of careful study, and it should be read and reread until its exquisite melody is felt and the subtle thoughts which it embodies fully understood. Yet there is little in the poem which requires annotation--the lark's song itself admits of no explanation.

"For sweetness the 'Ode to a Skylark' is inferior only to Coleridge, in rapturous pa.s.sion to no man. It is like the bird it sings,--enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, continuous, and alone,--small, but filling the heavens."--_Leigh Hunt._

"Has any one, since Shakespeare and Spenser, lighted on such tender and such grand ecstasies?"--_Taine._

The skylark is very generally distributed over the northern portions of the Old World, but is not found in America. Its song in the morning may often be heard when the bird is so high as to be entirely out of sight, and although not finely modulated is remarkably cheerful and prolonged.

A person who is accustomed to the song can tell by its variations whether it be ascending, stationary, or descending.

1. =profuse.= Accent here on the first syllable. From Lat. _profundo_, to pour forth.

2. Explain the figures of rhetoric employed in this line. The meaning of =blue=; of =wingest=.

3. =sunken sun.= The sun is not yet above the horizon, but the bird has risen so high that it is visible to him, and he "floats and runs" in its golden light.

4. What is the meaning of =rains=? of =rain= in the next stanza?

5. =wrought.= Influenced. A.-S. _worhte_, _wyrcan_, to work.

6. =sprite.= Spirit. In the first stanza he calls the lark a spirit and says it never was a bird; here he calls it "bird or sprite."

7. =Chorus hymeneal.= See note on "Prothalamion," page 241.

8. Compare this thought with the ideas contained in Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality."

=pine.= From A.-S. _pinan_, to pain. Our word _pain_ is derived from the same root.

HYMN OF PAN.

From the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on the bells of thyme, The birds on the myrtle-bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the gra.s.s, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus{1} was, Listening to my sweet pipings.