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!

288*

Percy Bysshe Shelley

THE GREEN LINNET

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of Spring's unclouded weather,

In this sequester'd nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!

And flowers and birds once more to greet,

My last year's friends together.

One have I mark'd, the happiest guest

In all this covert of the blest:

Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

289*

While birds and butterflies and flowers
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:

A Life, a Presence like the air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair;
Thyself thy own enjoyment.

Amid yon tuft of hazel trees

That twinkle to the gusty breeze
Behold him perch'd in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;

There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.

My dazzled sight he oft deceives-
A brother of the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;
As if by that exulting strain

He mock'd and treated with disdain
The voiceless Form he chose to feign,
While fluttering in the bushes.

William Wordsworth

TO THE CUCKOO

O blithe new-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice:

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;

From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,

Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!

Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days I listen'd to; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways In bush and tree and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still long'd for, never seen!

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget

That golden time again.

O blesséd Bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be

An unsubstantial faery place,

That is fit home for Thee!

William Wordsworth

290

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not though envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-—
That thou, light-wingéd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

0, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvéd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! beaker full of the warm South,

0 for a

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known:
The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies,
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or

new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd round by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalméd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild:
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a muséd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;