I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal 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 notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after And pine for what is not: With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness The world should listen then, as I am listening now! P. B. Shelley CCXLII 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 While birds, and butterflies, and flowers Amid yon tuft of hazel-trees There, where the flutter of his wings My dazzled sight he oft deceives— As if by that exulting strain He mock'd and treated with disdain The voiceless Form he chose to feign W. Wordsworth O CCXLIII TO THE CUCKOO BLITHE new-comer! I have heard, O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering Voice? While I am lying on the grass From hill to hill it seems to pass, Though babbling only to the vale 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 To seek thee did I often rove And I can listen to thee yet; O blessed bird! the earth we pace An unsubstantial, fairy place That is fit home for Thee! W. Wordsworth Μ' CCXLIV ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE Y 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 through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness, That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, O for a draught of vintage, that hath been Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, |