The lark is flickering in the light; Still the nightingale doth sing— All the isle, alive with Spring, Lies, a jewel of delight On the blue sea’s heaving breast: Not a breath from out the West, But some balmy smell doth bring From the sprouting myrtle buds, Or from meadows wide, that lie Each a green and dazzling sky, Paved with yellow cowslip-stars, Cloud-like, crossed by roseate bars Of the bloomy almond woods, And lit, like heaven, with fairest sheen Of the sun that hangs between. All is life that I can spy, To the farthest sea and sky, And my own the only pain Within this ring of Tyrrhene main. In the gnarled and cloven Pine Where that hell-born hag did chain me, All this orb of cloudless shine, All this youth in Earth’s old veins Tingling with the Spring’s sweet wine, With a sharper torment pain me. Pansies, in soft April rains And April’s sun, from Thea’s lap Fill their stalks with honeyed sap, But the sluggish blood she brings To the tough Pine’s hundred rings, Closer locks their cruel hold, Closer draws the scaly bark Round my prison, lightning-riven; So when Winter, wild and dark, Vexes wave and writhing wold And with murk vapor swathes the heaven, I must feel the vile bat creep In my narrow cleft, to sleep. By this coarse and alien state Is my dainty essence wronged; The fine sense that erst belonged To my nature, chafes at Fate, Till the happier elves I hate, Who in moonlight dances turn Underneath the palmy fern, Or in light and twinkling bands Follow on with linked hands To the Ocean’s yellow sands.