BIRDS AND POETS. 169 



dissolubly in his memory the image of this Poet with that 

 of the Skylark. One could not avoid this association, even 

 if the " Ode to a Skylark " had never been written. The 

 Poet felt it to be his skiey Brother, and greeted it out of his 

 heart of hearts, in the silver-footed cadences of that most 

 rare of exquisite strains. It seems to us that the poet had 

 unconsciously thrown out his own soul upon those music- 

 hinged plumes up the blue dome of air, 



To float and run 



Like an unbodied joy whose race has just hegun." 



It is evident that, in the simplicity of this beautiful ego- 

 tism, he was singing to, and of himself, without being aware. 

 In all poetry, there is not a more nice and perfect similitude 

 of the life and mission of the individual Poet, than that he 

 has furnished of his own in this ode. Who other than 

 Shelley is 



" Like a poet hidden 



In the light of thought, 

 Singing hymns unbidden, 



Till the world is wrought 

 To sympathize with hopes and fears it heeded not !" 



But it was an atmosphere akin to the sun-bright radiance of 

 a prophet's brow, in which he was " hidden ;" and the vision 

 of bat-eyed, oblivious dreamers has shrunk before it, because 

 it was of a 



" Light diviner than the common sun." 



Such " muling " in their dull infanticide of thought, have 

 been venomous as they knew how to be in denouncing him 

 as " a cold, incomprehensible Idealist I" Miss Barrett, in her 

 magnificent "Vision of the Poets," has been most shame- 

 fully disloyal to the glorious apprehensions in herself, when 

 amidst such "goodlie companie," she dismissed this poet 

 down the ages, on the attenuated echo of this vulgar lie : 



