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:
Our sincerest laughter

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;
If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

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!

P. B. Shelley

CCXLII

B

THE GREEN LINNET

ENEATH 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, Linnet! in thy green array
Presiding Spirit here to-day
Dost lead the revels of the May,
And this is thy dominion.

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.

W. Wordsworth

CCXLIII

TO THE CUCKOO

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!

Neglect me! no, I suffer'd long
From that ill thought: and being blind
Said 'Pride shall help me in my wrong:
Kind mother have I been, as kind
As ever breathed :' and that is true;
I've wet my path with tears like dew,
Weeping for him when no one knew.

My Son, if thou be humbled, poor,
Hopeless of honour and of gain,
O! do not dread thy mother's door,
Think not of me with grief and pain:
I now can see with better eyes;
And worldly grandeur I despise
And fortune with her gifts and lies.

Alas! the fowls of heaven have wings
And blasts of heaven will aid their flight;
They mount-how short a voyage brings
The wanderers back to their delight!
Chains tie us down by land and sea;
And wishes, vain as mine, may be
All that is left to comfort thee.

Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan
Maim'd, mangled by inhuman men ;
Or thou upon a desert thrown
Inheritest the lion's den;

Or hast been summon'd to the deep
Thou, thou, and all thy mates, to keep
An incommunicable sleep.

I look for ghosts: but none will force
Their way to me; 't is falsely said
That there was ever intercourse
Between the living and the dead;