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To a Skylark

He lay down in his grief to die
(First looking to the sea-like sky
That hath no waves!), because, alas!
Our human touch did on him pass,
And, with our touch, our agony.

1519

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861]

TO A SKYLARK

Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;

Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,

With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find

That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary
And to-day my heart is weary;

Had I now the wings of a Fairy,

Up to thee would I fly.

There is madness about thee, and joy divine

In that song of thine;

Lift me, guide me high and high

To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning

Thou art laughing and scorning;

Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest.

And, though little troubled with sloth,

Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth

To be such a traveler as I.

Happy, happy Liver,

With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver,
Joy and jollity be with us both!

Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven,
Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind;
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind,
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,

I, with my fate contented, will plod on,

And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done. William Wordsworth (1770-1850]

TO A SKYLARK

ETHEREAL minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

To the last point of vision, and beyond,

Mount, daring warbler!--that love-prompted strain
-"Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond-
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain:
Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing
All independent of the leafy spring.

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine,

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine:

Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home! William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

THE SKYLARK

BIRD of the wilderness,

Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud,
Far in the downy cloud,

The Skylark

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!

Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!

1521

James Hogg [1770-1835]

THE SKYLARK

How the blithe Lark runs up the golden stair

That leans through cloudy gates from Heaven to Earth,

And all alone in the empyreal air

Fills it with jubilant sweet songs of mirth;

How far he seems, how far

With the light upon his wings,

Is it a bird, or star

That shines, and sings?

What matter if the days be dark and frore,
That sunbeam tells of other days to be,
And singing in the light that floods him o'er
In joy he overtakes Futurity;
Under cloud-arches vast

He peeps, and sees behind
Great Summer coming fast
Adown the wind!

And now he dives into a rainbow's rivers,

In streams of gold and purple he is drowned, Shrilly the arrows of his song he shivers,

As though the stormy drops were turned to sound;
And now he issues through,

He scales a cloudy tower,
Faintly, like falling dew,

His fast notes shower.

Let every wind be hushed, that I may hear
The wondrous things he tells the World below,
Things that we dream of he is watching near,
Hopes that we never dreamed he would bestow;
Alas! the storm hath rolled

Back the gold gates again,
Or surely he had told

All Heaven to men!

So the victorious Poet sings alone,

And fills with light his solitary home,

And through that glory sees new worlds foreshown,
And hears high songs, and triumphs yet to come;
He waves the air of Time

With thrills of golden chords,
And makes the world to climb
On linked words.

What if his hair be gray, his eyes be dim,

If wealth forsake him, and if friends be cold, Wonder unbars her thousand gates to him, Truth never fails, nor Beauty waxes old; More than he tells his eyes

Behold, his spirit hears, Of grief, and joy, and sighs 'Twixt joy and tears.

Blest is the man who with the sound of song
Can charm away the heartache, and forget
The frost of Penury, and the stings of Wrong,
And drown the fatal whisper of Regret!

To a Skylark

Darker are the abodes

Of Kings, though his be poor,
While Fancies, like the Gods,
Pass. through his door.

Singing thou scalest Heaven upon thy wings,
Thou liftest a glad heart into the skies;
He maketh his own sunrise, while he sings,
And turns the dusty Earth to Paradise;
I see thee sail along

Far up the sunny streams,

Unseen, I hear his song,

I see his dreams.

1523

Frederick Tennyson [1807-1898]

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.

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