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 bright'ning.     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 aereal 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 those 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, 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?     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.