O May I Join the Choir Invisible! | Page 3

your lights faintly. _My_ country is there,?Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow.
_My_ Italy's there--with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair.
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn,?But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this! and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
Dead! one of them shot by the sea in the west!
And one of them shot in the east by the sea!?Both! both my boys! If, in keeping the feast,
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at _me_!
NATURE'S LADY.
Three years she grew in sun and shower,?Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower?On earth was never sown;?This child I to myself will take,?She shall be mine, and I will make?A lady of my own.
"Myself will to my darling be?Both law and impulse: and with me?The Girl, in rock and plain,?In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,?Shall feel an overseeing power?To kindle or restrain.
"She shall be sportive as the fawn?That wild with glee across the lawn?Or up the mountain springs;?And hers shall be the breathing balm,?And hers the silence and the calm,?Of mute insensate things.
{She shall be sportive as the fawn: p3.jpg}
"The floating clouds their state shall lend?To her; for her the willows bend;?Nor shall she fail to see?Even in the motions of the storm?Grace that shall mould the maiden's form?By silent sympathy.
"The stars of midnight shall be dear?To her; and she shall lean her ear?In many a secret place?Where rivulets dance their wayward round,?And beauty born of murmuring sound?Shall pass into her face."
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 art 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?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,?Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought?To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,?Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour?With music sweet as love which overflows her bower;
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,?Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial 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 heat these heavy-winged thieves;
{Thou art unseen, but yet I hear they shrill delight: p4.jpg}
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,?Rain-awakened flowers--
All that ever was?Joyous and clear and fresh--thy music doth surpass.
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 the 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.
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