Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
To a Skylark
1 Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
2 Bird thou never wert,
3 That from Heaven, or near it,
4 Pourest thy full heart
5In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
6 Higher still and higher
7 From the earth thou springest
8 Like a cloud of fire;
9 The blue deep thou wingest,
10And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
11 In the golden lightning
12 Of the sunken sun,
13 O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
14 Thou dost float and run;
15Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
16 The pale purple even
17 Melts around thy flight;
18 Like a star of Heaven,
19 In the broad day-light
20Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
21 Keen as are the arrows
22 Of that silver sphere,
23 Whose intense lamp narrows
24 In the white dawn clear
25Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
26 All the earth and air
27 With thy voice is loud,
28 As, when night is bare,
29 From one lonely cloud
30The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd.
31 What thou art we know not;
32 What is most like thee?
33 From rainbow clouds there flow not
34 Drops so bright to see
35As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
36 Like a Poet hidden
37 In the light of thought,
38 Singing hymns unbidden,
39 Till the world is wrought
40To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
41 Like a high-born maiden
42 In a palace-tower,
43 Soothing her love-laden
44 Soul in secret hour
45With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
46 Like a glow-worm golden
47 In a dell of dew,
48 Scattering unbeholden
49 Its a{:e}real hue
50Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
51 Like a rose embower'd
52 In its own green leaves,
53 By warm winds deflower'd,
54 Till the scent it gives
55Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:
56 Sound of vernal showers
57 On the twinkling grass,
58 Rain-awaken'd flowers,
59 All that ever was
60Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
61 Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
62 What sweet thoughts are thine:
63 I have never heard
64 Praise of love or wine
65That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
66 Chorus Hymeneal,
67 Or triumphal chant,
68 Match'd with thine would be all
69 But an empty vaunt,
70A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
71 What objects are the fountains
72 Of thy happy strain?
73 What fields, or waves, or mountains?
74 What shapes of sky or plain?
75What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
76 With thy clear keen joyance
77 Languor cannot be:
78 Shadow of annoyance
79 Never came near thee:
80Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
81 Waking or asleep,
82 Thou of death must deem
83 Things more true and deep
84 Than we mortals dream,
85Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
86 We look before and after,
87 And pine for what is not:
88 Our sincerest laughter
89 With some pain is fraught;
90Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
91 Yet if we could scorn
92 Hate, and pride, and fear;
93 If we were things born
94 Not to shed a tear,
95I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
96 Better than all measures
97 Of delightful sound,
98 Better than all treasures
99 That in books are found,
100Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
101 Teach me half the gladness
102 That thy brain must know,
103 Such harmonious madness
104 From my lips would flow
105The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
Notes
1] Written in 1820 near Leghorn and published with Prometheus Unbound in the same year. Mary Shelley, his wife, writes: "It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems."
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820).
First publication date:
1820
RPO poem editor: M. T. Wilson
RP edition: 3RP 2.576.
Recent editing: 4:2002/5/20
Composition date:
1820
Rhyme: ababb
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