"Where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be";
for time,
"Unfathomable sea, whose waves are years!
Ocean of time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!"
for snow, "and all the forms of the radiant frost."
The whole poem in which these last words occur ought to be read. Into it, in a sad mood, he has compressed all his love of nature. It is called simply Song, and is addressed to the Spirit of Delight. This Spirit, the poet complains, has deserted him; it forgets all but those who need it not; and such an one as he, can never win it back again, for it is dismayed with sorrow, and reproach it will not hear. Yet, he goes on to say,
"I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night,
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.
I love snow, and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves and winds and storms,—
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.
I love tranquil solitude.
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good.
Between thee and me
What difference? But thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less."
But Shelley's spirit rises on the wings of his sublime enthusiasm for liberty high into the clear air above all these mournful moods. His ode To a Skylark, the poem which indicates the transition to the poetry of liberty, is written in a perfect intoxication of joy and freedom from care. It is almost safe to assert that there had been nothing in the older English literature finer in its way than the best of Wordsworth's songs to the lark, which are so typical of the spirit and art of the Lake School.
"Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine,"
writes Wordsworth; and, as the true conservative poet, he goes on to apostrophise the lark as
"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam—
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."