Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at once the most ethereal and most gorgeous; the one who has clothed his thoughts in draperies of the most evanescent and most magnificent words and imagery. Not Milton himself is more learned in Grecisms, or nicer in etymological propriety; and nobody, throughout, has a style so Orphic and primæval. His poetry is as full of mountains, seas, and skies, of light, and darkness, and the seasons, and all the elements of our being, as if Nature herself had written it, with the creation and its hopes newly cast around her; not, it must be confessed, without too indiscriminate a mixture of great and small, and a want of sufficient shade,a certain chaotic brilliancy, "dark with excess of light." Shelley (in the verses to a Lady with a Guitar) might well call himself Ariel. All the more enjoying part of his poetry is Ariel,-the "delicate" yet powerful "spirit," jealous of restraint, yet able to serve; living in the elements and the flowers; treading the "ooze of the salt deep," and running "on the sharp wind of the north;" feeling for creatures unlike himself; "flaming amazement" on them too, and singing exquisitest songs. Alas! and he suffered for years, as Ariel did in the cloven pine: but now he is out of it, and serving the purposes of Beneficence with a calmness befitting his knowledge and his love. TO A SKYLARK. I. 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.' II. 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. III. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an embodied joy, whose race has just begun. The pale purple even IV. Melts round thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad day-light Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. V. 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 VI. With thy voice is loud As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. VII. 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 VIII. In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. IX. Like a high-born maiden 2 In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. X. Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. XI. 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-wingèd thieves. XII. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. XIII. Teach me, 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, XIV. Or triumphal chaunt, Match'd with thine would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. XV. 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? XVI. 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, XVII. Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy note flow in such a crystal stream? XVIII. We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought. XIX. 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. XX. 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!3 XXI. 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. "In the spring of 1820," says Mrs. Shelley, "we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the Р |