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 aerial 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 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

    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!

Composed at Leghorn, 1820, and published with "Prometheus Unbound" in the same year. There is a transcript in the Harvard manuscript.