en soothing her love-laden soul in
secret; like a hidden glowworm scattering its hues unbeholden; like a
rose embowered in its leaves making faint the thieving winds with its
heavy scent. Its music surpasses the delicate sounds of vernal showers
on the twinkling grass, the beauty of the rain-awakened flowers, and all
that ever was clear and fresh and joyous. Such is the song.

"What are the thoughts that inspire such heavenly melody?" the poet
cries. "Teach us, teach us thy sweet thoughts. I have never heard such a
flood of rapture so divine. Matched with thy music the noblest marriage
hymn, the grandest Te Deum would be but an empty boast. From what
fountains springs thy happy strain? Is it from fields, or waves or
mountains, from strange shapes of the sky and plain? Is it from
ignorance of pain, from love of thine own kind that the joyous music
comes? Certainly thou lovest, but there can be no weariness in thy keen
joy, no shadow of annoyance. How different we!

"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."

"To me, the poet, thy skill would be better than all the measures of
delightful sound, than all the treasures found in books and if I could
sing one half as well as thou, the world would listen to me entranced as
I am listening to thee."

If the song of the lark is beautiful, the song of the poet is not
surpassed. The riotous spirit of music sings in every line, beauty is
seen in every stanza, is lavished upon every phrase, upon every
melodious verse. The prodigality of beautiful phrases is marvelous. The
phrases descriptive of the bird alone are strikingly apt and numerous:

"Blithe spirit"; "bird thou never wert"; "like a cloud of fire"; "like
an unbodied joy"; "like a star of heaven"; "like a poet hidden in the
light of thought"; "like a highborn maiden in a palace tower"; "like a
glowworm golden"; "like a rose embowered"; "sprite and bird"; "thou
scorner of the ground."

To characterize the song properly, the poet finds it necessary to use
these phrases: "Profuse strains of unpremeditated art"; "shrill
delight"; "keen as are the arrows of tha