BIKDS AND POETS. 
173 
" The low-roosted lark 
From its thatched pallet roused" 
never sprang up on sublimer flights than did this Poet, 
" Swift afl a spirit hastening to his task 
Of glory and of good, " 
" Sunward now his flight he raises^ 
Catches fire, as seems, and blazes 
With uninjm'ed plumes." 
With all this flashing wonder of his far and graceful wing- 
ing, yet is that shrill delight we hear — showering a rain of 
melody, while soaring he still sings — the voice of our 
humanity, mellow and rich with old familiar tones. Still 
we are overcome, as by a summer cloud," with admiration 
of this most chaste and sacred enthusiasm, which seems to 
be mounting, on its own joy, to shake the earth-dews from 
its pinions off into their old fountains up to the sky ! 
Ah, what a charming symbol is it, of the wild, unconquer- 
able might of Love ! Though its cradle and its common 
home is on the base glebe, yet its exultations will not be 
weighed down and tamed — but must as well mount to glad- 
den all above — linking, in " subtle silvery sweetness" the 
dust-trodden with the starry fields! Shelley most beauti- 
fully characterizes that marvellous and indefinable sympathy 
between the Earth and the Human Poetry — which we have 
been endeavoring to illustrate — ^in one of the concluding 
stanzas to the Skylark ! 
" Better tlian all measures, 
Of delighful sound ; 
Better than all treasures. 
That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground." 
But, ah, wo is me ! Weep now, Urania — thou eldest muse 
— for him ! That harmony paused — ■ 
