It is, however, in "A Prelude and a Song" that this ardour of freedom finds purest expression. Not that the poem was designed to that end. I believe that it was made for nothing on this earth but the sheer joy of singing. How can one describe this poem? It is the lyrical soul of poetry; it is the heart of poetic rapture; it is the musical spirit of the wind and of birds' cries; it is a passion of movement, swaying to the dancing grace of leaves and flowers and grass, to the majesty of sailing clouds; it is the sweet, shrill, palpitating ecstasy of the lark, singing up and up until he is out of sight, sustaining his song at the very door of heaven, and singing into sight again, to drop suddenly down to the green earth, exhausted.--And I have not yet begun to say what the poem really is: I have a doubt whether prose is equal to a definition. In some degree at any rate it is a pæan of freedom: delighted liberty lives in it. But we cannot apply our little distinctions here, saying that it is this or that or the other kind of freedom which is extolled; because we are now in a region where thought and feeling are one; in a golden age where good and evil are lost in innocency; in a blessed state where body and soul have forgotten their old feud in glad reunion. One hesitates to quote from the poem. It is long, and as the title implies, it is in two movements. But though every stanza has a lightsome grace which makes it lovely in itself--though the whole chain, if broken up, would yield as many gems as there are stanzas, irregular in size and shape indeed, but each shining and complete--the great beauty of the poem is its beauty as a whole. It would seem a reproach to imperil that. Yet there is a culminating passage of extreme significance to which we must come directly for the crowning word of the poet's philosophy. From that we may take a fragment now, if only to observe the reach of its imagination and to win some sense which the poem conveys of limitless spiritual range. Reach up my wings! Now broaden into space and carry me Beyond where any lark that sings Can get: Into the utmost sharp tenuity, The breathing-point, the start, the scarcely-stirred High slenderness where never any bird Has winged to yet! The moon peace and the star peace and the peace Of chilly sunlight: to the void of space, The emptiness, the giant curve, the great Wide-stretching arms wherein the gods embrace And stars are born and suns....