Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
NOTES.
This is perhaps the most perfect lyric of its kind in the English language. Every verse is worthy of careful study, and it should be read and reread until its exquisite melody is felt and the subtle thoughts which it embodies fully understood. Yet there is little in the poem which requires annotation—the lark's song itself admits of no explanation.
"For sweetness the 'Ode to a Skylark' is inferior only to Coleridge, in rapturous passion to no man. It is like the bird it sings,—enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, continuous, and alone,—small, but filling the heavens."—Leigh Hunt.
"Has any one, since Shakespeare and Spenser, lighted on such tender and such grand ecstasies?"—Taine.
The skylark is very generally distributed over the northern portions of the Old World, but is not found in America. Its song in the morning may often be heard when the bird is so high as to be entirely out of sight, and although not finely modulated is remarkably cheerful and prolonged. A person who is accustomed to the song can tell by its variations whether it be ascending, stationary, or descending.
[1.] profuse. Accent here on the first syllable. From Lat. profundo, to pour forth.
[2.] Explain the figures of rhetoric employed in this line. The meaning of blue; of wingest.
[3.] sunken sun. The sun is not yet above the horizon, but the bird has risen so high that it is visible to him, and he "floats and runs" in its golden light.
[4.] What is the meaning of rains? of rain in the next stanza?