Part 75 (1/2)
”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.
”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 In sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
”Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul a secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower.
”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.
”We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; The 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 would listen then, as I am listening now!”
As we listen to the lark singing we look upward and see the light summer clouds driving over the blue sky. They, too, have a song which once the listening poet heard.
”I bring fresh showers for the thirsty flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shades for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the las.h.i.+ng hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pa.s.s in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast, And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While asleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits, In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean with gentle motion This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The spirit he love remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
”I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl: The volcanoes are dim, and the starts reel and swim When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, In the million-coloured bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, While the moist earth was laughing below.
”I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky: I pa.s.s through the pores of the ocean and sh.o.r.es; I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.”
That is one of Sh.e.l.ley's happiest poems. For most of his poems have at least a tone of sadness, even the joyous song of the skylark leaves us with a sigh on our lips, ”our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught.” But The Cloud is full only of joy and movement, and of the laughter of innocent mischief.
It is as if we saw the boy Sh.e.l.ley again.
We find his sadness, too, in his Ode to the West Wind, but it ends on a note of hope. Here are the last verses--
”Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
”Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
”Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth; And by the incantation of this verse,
”Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth