Springing in valleys green and low, Our outward life requires them not To comfort man, to whisper hope, MARY HOWITT. HOLY FLOWERS. Woe's me-how knowledge makes forlorn! Of their old growth, the holy flowers; Once musing in the woodland nook, Doctrine and miracle, whate'er We draw from books was treasured there. Faith, in the wild wood's tangled bound, A blessed heritage had found! And Charity and Hope were seen Now mouldering silently away, First, the lark, when she means to rejoice to cheer herself and those that hear her, she then quits the earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air; and having ended her heavenly employment, grows then mute and sad to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch but for necessity. How do the blackbird and throssel, with their melodious voice, bid welcome to the cheerful spring, and in their fixed mouths warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can reach to! Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in their particular seasons, as, namely, the laverock, the tit-lark, the little linnet, and the honest robin, who loves mankind both alive and dead. But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear air, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, "Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth!" Thus speaks good, old Isaak Walton. Let us now hear Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose ode "To a Skylark" is worthy of the bird itself. TO A SKYLARK. Hail to thee, blithe spirit! 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 day-light; 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 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. SONGS OF SKYLARKS. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it needed not. Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower; Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view. Like a rose embowered By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives 209 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, 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. P What objects are the fountains 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; 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 which 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 could come near. Better than all measures Of delight and sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness The world should listen then as I am listening now. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. |