Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, IV 35 40 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 45 The impulse of thy strength, only less free If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed 50 Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 5 V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, 60 65 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 70 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. Melts around thy flight; The pale purple even Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight 5 IO 15 The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed. 30 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 35 In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 40 Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view: 50 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-wingèd thieves: 55 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 hymenaal, 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? 60 65 70 What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? 75 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. 80 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: 85 Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 90 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 95 100 as I am listening now. 105 THE CLOUD I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, I bear light shade for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, I sift the snow on the mountains below, |