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 chaunt 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! _P. B. Shelley_ CCLXXXVIII _THE GREEN LINNET_ Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of Spring's unclouded weather, In this sequester'd nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat! And flowers and birds once more to greet, My last year's friends together. One have I mark'd, the happiest guest In all this covert of the blest: Hail to Thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion! Thou, Linnet! in thy green array Presiding Spirit here to-day Dost lead the revels of the May; And this is thy dominion. While birds, and butterflies, and flowers, Make all one band of paramours, Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, Art sole in thy employment; A Life, a Presence like the air, Scattering thy gladness without care, Too blest with any one to pair; Thyself thy own enjoyment. Amid yon tuft of hazel trees That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perch'd in ecstasies Yet seeming still to hover; There! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him all over.