which clouds art bright’ning,
      Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
      Melts around thy flight;
   Like a star of heaven,
      In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight—

   Keen as are the arrows
      Of that silver sphere
   Whose intense lamp narrows
      In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there.

   All the earth and air
      With thy voice is loud,
   As, when night is bare,
      From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

   What thou art we know not;
      What is most like thee?
   From rainbow-clouds there flow not
      Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:—

Like a poet hidden
      In the light of thought,
   Singing hymns unbidden,
      Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

   Like a high-born maiden
      In a palace tower,
   Soothing her love-laden
      Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love which overflows her bower;

   Like a glow-worm golden
      In a dell of dew,
   Scattering unbeholden
      Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view;

   Like a rose embowered
      In its own green leaves,
   By warm winds deflowered,
      Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much heat these heavy-winged thieves;

Sound of vernal showers
      On the twinkling grass,
   Rain-awakened flowers—
      All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh—thy music doth surpass.

   Teach us, sprite or bird,
      What sweet thoughts are thine:
   I have never heard
      Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

   Chorus hymeneal,
      Or triumphal chaunt,
   Matched with thine, would be all
      But an empty vaunt—
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

   What objects are the fountains
      Of the happy strain?
   What fields, or waves or mountains?
      What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
      Languor cannot be:
   Shadow of annoyance
      Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

   Waking or asleep,
      Thou of death must deem
   Things more true and deep
      Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

   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.