I'll seek, by day, some glade unknown, Thy Heaven, on which 'tis bliss to look, I'll read thy anger in the rack That clouds awhile the day-beam's track; Of sunny brightness breaking through! There's nothing bright, above, below, There's nothing dark, below, above, PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 1792-1821. (Manual, pp. 411 415.) 283. FROM "ODE 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 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, 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, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. * 284. RETURNING SPRING. Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, The ants, the bees, the swallows, reappear; Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead season's bier. The loving birds now pair in every brake, Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean, God dawned on chaos; in its stream immersed, The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst, Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight The beauty and the joy of their renewéd might. 285. THE PLAIN OF LOMBARDY. Beneath is spread, like a green sea, Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies: Underneath; the leaves unsodden, And my spirit, which so long Darkened this swift stream of song, Interpenetrated lie By the glory of the sky; Which from heaven like dew doth fall, JOHN KEATS. 1796-1821. (Manual, p. 415.) 286. FROM "ODE TO AUTUMN." Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Or sinking, as the light wind lives or dies; 287. FROM "HYPERION." There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines Its strain, when other harmonies, stopped short, Thus grew it up "Not in my own sad breast, Which is its own great judge and searcher out, Can I find reason why ye should be thus: Not in the legends of the first of days, Studied from that old spirit-leaved book Which starry Uranus with finger bright Saved from the shores of darkness, when the waves Low-ebbed still hid it up in shallow gloom; And the which book ye know I ever kept For my firm-based footstool: — Ah, infirm! Each several one against the other three, As fire with air loud warring when rain-floods Drown both, and press them both against earth's face, Where, finding sulphur, a quadruple wrath Unhinges the poor world: not in that strife, Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep, Can I find reason why ye should be thus: No, nowhere can unriddle, though I search, Even to swooning, why ye, Divinities, |