see the girl in Jules Breton's picture, but I hear the voice of my
English pupil.

But if our apperceptive background fails to furnish a memory of the
identical sight and sound for our inspiring, it at least holds bird
notes and bird flights of great beauty, and we must call upon these for
the impulse to voice Shelley's apostrophe:

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

An early autumn number of the _Atlantic Monthly_ for 1907 published a
poem by Mr. Ridgley Torrence, entitled _The Lesser Children_, or _A
Threnody at the Hunting Season_. The poem is worthy, in sentiment and
structure, to be set beside Shelley's ode. Let us compare with the
picture which the eighteenth-century poet has given us this one from our
modern song-writer:

Who has not seen in the high gulf of light
What, lower, was a bird, but now
Is moored and altered quite
Into an island of unshaded joy?
To whom the mate below upon the bough
Shouts once and brings him from his high employ.
Yet speeding he forgot not of the cloud
Where he from glory sprang and burned aloud,
But took a little of the day,
A little of the colored sky,
And of the joy that would not stay
He wove a song that cannot die.

Now let us study closely the first verse of the older poem. Spirit and
voice must soar in the first line, "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!" The
two words "hail" and "blithe" are swift-winged words. Let them fly. Give
them their wings. Let them do all they are intended to do. The rhythm of
the whole poem is aspiring. Reverence the rhythm, but keep the thought
floating clear above it in the second line, "Bird thou never wert." With
the next two lines the tone must gather head to be poured forth in the
last line, "In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." Let us make
another comparative study. Set on the other side of this picture
Lowell's description of the "little bird" in his prologue to Sir
Launfal's vision:

The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives.

The second verse of the "Skylark" demands a still higher flight of
imagination and tone. Let us try it.

Higher still and higher
From the eart