StoryTitle("caps", "Ode to a Skylark") ?>
"Ode to a Skylark," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually
assigned to "grammar grades" of schools. It is included here out of
respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these
lines than with any other lines in any poem:
PoemStart() ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "\"Like a poet hidden,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "In the light of thought", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Singing songs unbidden", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Till the world is wrought", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.\"", "") ?>
PoemEnd() ?>
PoemStart() ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Hail to thee, blithe spirit—", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Bird thou never wert—", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "That from heaven or near it", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Pourest thy full heart", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.", "") ?>
PagePoem(269, "L0", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Higher still and higher", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "From the earth thou springest,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Like a cloud of fire;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "The blue deep thou wingest,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "In the golden lightning", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Of the sunken sun,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "O'er which clouds are brightening,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Thou dost float and run,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The pale purple even", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Melts around thy flight;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Like a star of heaven,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "In the broad daylight", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "All the earth and air", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "With thy voice is loud,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "As, when night is bare,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "From one lonely cloud", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "What thou art we know not;", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "What is most like thee?", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "From rainbow-clouds there flow not", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Drops so bright to see", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:—", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Like a poet hidden", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "In the light of thought;", "") ?>
PagePoem(270, "L0", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Singing hymns unbidden,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Till the world is wrought", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Teach us, sprite or bird,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "What sweet thoughts are thine:", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "I have never heard", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Praise of love or wine", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Chorus hymeneal", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Or triumphal chaunt,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Matched with thine, would be all", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "But an empty vaunt—", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "What objects are the fountains", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "Of thy happy strain?", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "What fields, or waves, or mountains?", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "What shapes of sky or plain?", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Teach me half the gladness", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "That thy brain must know,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Such harmonious madness", "") ?>
PoemLine("L4", "", "From my lips would flow,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The world should listen then, as I am listening now!", "") ?>
PoemAttribution("100", SmallCapsText("Percy Bysshe Shelley.")) ?>
PoemEnd() ?>