NOTES: _3 shade 1820; shades 1839. _6 buds 1839; birds 1820. _59 with a 1820; with the 1830.
***
TO A SKYLARK.
[Composed at Leghorn, 1820, and published with “Prometheus Unbound” in the same year. There is a transcript in the Harvard manuscript.]
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. _5
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. _10
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. _15
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, _20
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there. _25
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed. _30