Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. TO A SKYLARK Composed at Leghorn, and published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. The occasion is described by Mrs. Shelley: In the spring we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes, whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fireflies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems.' HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, 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, 10 米A And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 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. 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, -- Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear 20 Until we hardly see- we feel that it is there; All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view: Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives 50 Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Within the surface of Time's fleeting river Drove the astonished herds of men from Immovably unquiet, and forever every side. IV The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favoring heaven; from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. On the unapprehensive wild The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child, Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Egean main It trembles, but it cannot pass away! The voices of thy bards and sages thunder With an earth-awakening blast Through the caverns of the past; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast. A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, Which soars where Expectation never flew, Rending the veil of space and time asunder! One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew; One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. VII Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Mænad, She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest From that Elysian food was yet un weaned; And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel, Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file. Twins of a single destiny! appeal To the eternal years enthroned before us In the dim West; impress us from a seal, All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal. XIV Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant's head; His dead spirit lives in thee. Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free! And thou, lost Paradise of this divine And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness! Thou island of eternity! thou shrine Where desolation clothed with loveli ness Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. XV Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name Of King into the dust! or write it there, So that this blot upon the page of fame Were as a serpent's path, which the light air Erases, and the flat sands close behind! Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a mass, irrefragably firm, The axes and the rods which awe mankind; The sound has poison in it, 't is the |