_O darkness! Oh in vain!
Oh I am very sick and sorrowful._

. . . . . . . . . . .

The bird that occupies the second place to the nightingale in British
poetical literature is the skylark, a pastoral bird as the Philomel is
an arboreal,--a creature of light and air and motion, the companion of
the plowman, the shepherd, the harvester,--whose nest is in the stubble
and whose tryst is in the clouds. Its life affords that kind of contrast
which the imagination loves,--one moment a plain pedestrian bird, hardly
distinguishable from the ground, the next a soaring, untiring songster,
reveling in the upper air, challenging the eye to follow him and the ear
to separate his notes.

The lark's song is not especially melodious, but is blithesome,
sibilant, and unceasing. Its type is the grass, where the bird makes its
home, abounding, multitudinous, the notes nearly all alike and all in
the same key, but rapid, swarming, prodigal, showering down as thick and
fast as drops of rain in a summer shower.

Many noted poets have sung the praises of the lark, or been kindled
by his example. Shelley's ode and Wordsworth's "To a Skylark" are well
known to all readers of poetry, while every schoolboy will recall Hogg's
poem, beginning:--

"Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place--
Oh to abide in the desert with thee!"

I heard of an enthusiastic American who went about English fields
hunting a lark with Shelley's poem in his hand, thinking no doubt to use
it as a kind of guide-book to the intricacies and harmonies of the song.
He reported not having heard any larks, though I have little doubt they
were soaring and singing about him all the time, though of course they
did not sing to his ear the song that Shelley heard. The poets are
the best natural historians, only you must know how to read them. They
translate the facts largely and freely. A celebrated lady once said to
Turner, "I confess I cannot see in nature what you do." "Ah, madam,"
said the complacent artist, "don't you wish you could!"

Shelley's poem is perhaps better known, and has a higher reputation
among literary folk, than Wordsworth's; it is more lyrical and
lark-like; but it is needlessly long, though no longer than the lark's
song itself, but the lark can't help it, and Shelley can. I quote only a
few stanzas:--