With clouds and sky about me ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot that seems so to my mind.
Shelley, in an ode which expresses the bird’s ecstasy of song, also thus addresses it, in a strain of sadness peculiar to himself:—
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