And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,-

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil!

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last found home, and knew the old

no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is borne
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting

sea!

Reprinted by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

The Sandpiper

Celia Thaxter

Celia Thaxter was born in 1835. Her father was a lighthouse keeper. She wrote many poems dealing with Nature and the sea, with which she was very familiar. She died in 1894.

This poem, as a whole, is characterized by a tone of affection, but there are other tones that creep in here and there while the poet is depicting the different scenes. For instance, in the description of the storm in the second stanza there is a slight element of fear and awe, and a covering, almost a blackening, of the tone, with a leveling of the melody. As the poet seems to be talking to herself, or, in the last stanza, to the sandpiper, this selection is perhaps best read from manuscript. Let the audience imagine the scene, do not try to dramatize it too much.

ACROSS the narrow beach we flit,

One little sandpiper and I,

And fast I gather, bit by bit,

The scattered driftwood bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,-
One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds

Scud black and swift across the sky;

Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds

Stand out the white lighthouses high.

Almost as far as eye can reach

I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach, One little sandpiper and I.

I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry.
He starts not at my fitful song,
Or flash of fluttering drapery.
He has no thought of any wrong;

He scans me with a fearless eye.
Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky:
For are we not God's children both,

Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

Reprinted by permission of The Atlantic Monthly.

To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley

For biographical note concerning the author, see "Ode to the West Wind," page 190.

The tone of this selection is much lighter than that employed in Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale." The rate is faster, too. The poem is better adapted to manuscript reading than to recitation. Joyousness is found throughout the poem, yet in the last few stanzas this mood is tinged with regret.

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 are brightening, 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 sweet these heavy-
wingèd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers on the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers, all that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.