To a Skylark

6Higher still and higher

7From the earth thou springest

8Like a cloud of fire;

9The blue deep thou wingest,

10And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

11In the golden lightning

12Of the sunken sun,

13O'er which clouds are bright'ning.

14Thou dost float and run;

15Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

16The pale purple even

17Melts around thy flight;

18Like a star of Heaven,

19In the broad daylight

20Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

21Keen as are the arrows

22Of that silver sphere,

23Whose intense lamp narrows

24In the white dawn clear

25Until we hardly see — we feel that it is there.

26All the earth and air

27With thy voice is loud,

28As, when night is bare,

29From one lonely cloud

30The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed.

31What thou art we know not;

32What is most like thee?

33From rainbow clouds there flow not

34Drops so bright to see

35As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

36Like a Poet hidden

37In the light of thought,

38Singing hymns unbidden,

39Till the world is wrought

40To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

41Like a high-born maiden

42In a palace-tower,

43Soothing her love-laden

44Soul in secret hour

45With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

46Like a glow-worm golden

47In a dell of dew,

48Scattering unbeholden

49Its aereal hue

50Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view!

51Like a rose embowered

52In its own green leaves,

53By warm winds deflowered,

54Till the scent it gives

55Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

56Sound of vernal showers

57On the twinkling grass,

58Rain-awakened flowers,

59All that ever was

60Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass:

61Teach us, Sprite or Bird,

62What sweet thoughts are thine:

63I have never heard

64Praise of love or wine

65That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

66Chorus Hymeneal,

67Or triumphal chant,

68Matched with thine would be all

69But an empty vaunt,

70A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

71What objects are the fountains

72Of thy happy strain?

73What fields, or waves, or mountains?

74What shapes of sky or plain?

75What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

76With thy clear keen joyance

77Languor cannot be:

78Shadow of annoyance

79Never came near thee:

80Thou lovest — but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

81Waking or asleep,

82Thou of death must deem

83Things more true and deep

84Than we mortals dream,

85Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

86We look before and after,

87And pine for what is not:

88Our sincerest laughter

89With some pain is fraught;

90Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

91Yet if we could scorn

92Hate, and pride, and fear;

93If we were things born

94Not to shed a tear,

95I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

96Better than all measures

97Of delightful sound,

98Better than all treasures

99That in books are found,

100Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

101Teach me half the gladness

102That thy brain must know,

103Such harmonious madness

104From my lips would flow

105The world should listen then — as I am listening now.