the poet true to nature and science
when he says:

"For after the rain, when, with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the dome of the air"?

What is the "cenotaph" of the cloud? Out of what does the cloud rise
again? What is there appropriate in saying that the cloud rises like a
ghost? What is it the cloud builds up again?

Note the following particularly beautiful phrases:

"Leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams."

"Great pines groan aghast."

"The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes."

"The crimson pall of eve."

"The woof of my tent's thin roof."

"My wind-built tent."

"The million-colored bow."

"Nurseling of the sky."

"With never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare."

Read aloud the entire lyric till its sweet music is yours. Note the
smooth rhythm, the peculiar adaptation of sound to sense, the flowing
cadences in the lines.

_Ode to a Skylark_

(Volume VII, page 275)

There are three classes of lyrics that are to a greater or less degree
in the nature of an address to some person, place or thing. The elegy is
a lyric address praising the dead, the ode and the sonnet may praise
living or dead. The elegy in its measures partakes of the solemnity of
the grave, the ode is hampered by no such restrictions. Neither is the
sonnet, although by its strict requirements of form it is set off in a
class by itself. In the ode the poet enjoys his greatest freedom, for he
may use any meter, may write at any length and in any manner, grave, gay
or grotesque. Accordingly the odes of our language are most spontaneous,
musical, inspiring and beautiful.

_The Skylark_ is a perfect example of an ode at its best. It is full of
life and joy. It sparkles in every line and vies in music with the song
of the lark himself.

"Hail to thee, _blithe spirit_!--
Bird thou never wert."--

Those two lines are to be taken as the key note of the whole lyric. It
is the spirit of free and perfect melody that Shelley is addressing,
melody that comes from heaven or near it, that bubbles from the full
heart, that is free from rules and conventions, unpremeditated, yet all
art. It is "Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun." "What thou
art we know not," yet thou art like a poet hidden singing hymns
unbidden; like a high-born maid