00317--To a Skylark By Percy Bysshe Shelley

To a Skylark 

                                   By Percy Bysshe Shelley

     

  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 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,

                In the broad day-light

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?

         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 embower'd

                In its own green leaves,

         By warm winds deflower'd,

                Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

         Sound of vernal showers

                On the twinkling grass,

         Rain-awaken'd flowers,

                All that ever was

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

         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.

         Chorus Hymeneal,

                Or triumphal chant,

         Match'd with thine would be all

                But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

         What objects are the fountains

                Of thy happy strain?

         What fields, or waves, or mountains?

                What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

         With thy clear keen joyance

                Languor cannot be:

         Shadow of annoyance

                Never came near thee:

Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

         Waking or asleep,

                Thou of death must deem

         Things more true and deep

                Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

         We look before and after,

                And pine for what is not:

         Our sincerest laughter

                With some pain is fraught;

Our 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 should listen then, as I am listening now. 

00079--On what basis does Shelley call the poets 'The unacknowledged legislators of the world'? OR How does Shelly defend poetry against the charges brought against it by Love Peacock in his Four Ages of Poetry.

                                      

            Shelley's 'A Defence of Poetry' is a rejoinder to Love Peacock's charges levelled against poetry and poets in his four Ages of Poetry.  Peacock called poets 'semi-barbarians in a civilized community' and condemned Shelley's own poetry as "querulous egotistical rhapsodies."

            Defending poetry, Shelley says that poetry is on embodiment of "beautiful idealism of moral excellence."  The poet "excites a generous impulse, an ardent thirst for excellence."  He calls the poet a nightingale , who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude, with sweet sound."  He says that poetry is the creative impulse in man.  Poets are "not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance and architecture, and statutory, and painting, they are the institutors of laws, and founders of a civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life."  They are men of the most spotless virtue, the most consummate prudence, the most fortunate of men."  They are "philosophers of the very loftiest power."  Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."

            Poetry is 'the centre and circumference of knowledge and it comprehends all science.'  Consequently, Shelley calls the poets "unacknowledged legislators of the world."  The poet reveals 'those forms which are common to universal nature and existence.'  Hence a poem is "the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth."

            Thus "a poet, as he is the author of the highest wisdom, pleasure virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best the wisest and the most illustrious of men."  So the poet is the legislator of the moral, spiritual and intellectual life in the world.