Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous and fresh and clear thy music doth surpass.
Teach me, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphant chaunt,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt—
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields or waves or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep
Thou of death must deem,
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy note flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter,
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
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.
Inferior to this, but still very beautiful, more natural, and more especially Scottish, are the following lines to the Skylark by the "Ettrick Shepherd:"