ABOU BEN ADHEM. ABOU Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of And saw, within the moonlight in his room, peace, "What writest thou?" The vision raised its head, Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." The angel wrote and vanished. The next night And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, Percy Bysshe Shelley. TO THE 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, The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the setting sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an embodied 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, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 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, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden, In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden, In a dell of dew, 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 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach no 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 triumphant chant, 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? With thy clear, keen joyance Languor cannot be; Shades of annoyance Never come 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; 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; 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, From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And the spring arose on the garden fair, But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant. The snow-drop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, |