Ode to a Skylark

      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
        From the earth thou springest,
      Like a cloud of fire;
        The blue deep thou wingest,
    And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.

      In the golden lightning
        Of the sunken sun,
      O'er which clouds are brightening,
        Thou dost float and run,
    Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

      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.

      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.

      What thou art we know not;
        What is most like thee?
      From rainbow-clouds there flow not
        Drops so bright to see
    As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:--

      Like a poet hidden
        In the light of thought;
      Singing hymns unbidden,
        Till the world is wrought
    To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

      Teach us, 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 triumphal chaunt,
      Matched 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?

      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!