In 1839, when Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley were staying in Italy, they heard the song of a skylark. It was a beautiful summer's eve when they heard it carolling while they were wandering lanes with myrtle hedges--bowers to fireflies, as it was described.
The poem's beginning is said to cast doubt as to whether it's really a bird, but the poet makes references to it as such. He says to the spirit, that it was never a bird, using the archaic word "wert" as we use were.
He heard a bird, but whatever was in Shelley's poetic fancy and thought, I've here called to mind an angelic spirit, one tasked to help us, to reach our created and everlasting goal.
Like the lark that springs up, and quoting Shelley's first lines, I spring from that.
* * * *
"Hail to thee, Blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert..."
Thou "from Heaven, or near it,"
Fly down to us on dirt...
Thou aren't of substance corporeal,
Nor singest thou not like lark, nor oriole:
But art, a spirit, an angel being
And seest as the angels seeing.
From a
lofty, celestial choir,Fly down to us from higher:
Down to us, here made of dust,
Here upon the earthen crust.
Aid us on
this earthly ground,
Where we were human born.
Help us, be heaven bound,
There awaken some
glorious morn!
By the sin of Adam and Eve,
Was heaven shutter'd and grace gone;
From the Garden they had to leave
At the race's distant dawn.
They offended the Infinite One:
God the Father, Spirit and Son;
No longer were things so well,
In disobeying, they
fell
Some of what Adam had,
In his gifted nomenclature,
Are lost to us..and it's sad
For we must contend
with a fallen nature.
O
us assist, I thee implore:
Guide us to God and holy grace.
Bar us from that infernal door,
And lead us to our eternal place.
Carry us with thy plumed wing
Beyond the earthly mire,
To where thy kind do sing,
Beyond the moon and stars of fire.
--John
Riedell, with thanks to Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Quoted here is a portion of Shelley's poetic work. I've set in blue,
words and lines I like:
Ode to a Skylark
Hail to thee, blithe
Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
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. (I like this reversal)
In the golden
lightningOf the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
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,
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 overflow'd.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
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Site Last Updated on 08/21/18