lyrics, that I would try to gain your love at present, for although he wrote The Cenci, the best tragedy of his time, a tragedy which by its terror and pain links him with Shakespeare, it is as a lyric poet that we love Shelley.  “Here,” says another poet,* “Shelley forgets that he is anything but a poet, forgets sometimes that he is anything but a child. . . .  He plays truant from earth, slips through the wicket of fancy into heaven’s meadow, and goes gathering stars.”  And of all our poets, Shelley is the least earthly, the most spiritual.  But he loved the beautiful world, the sea and sky, and when we have heard him sing of the clouds and the skylark, of the wind and the waves of—­

Francis Thompson.

    “The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
        And the starry night;
    Autumn evening, and the morn
    When the golden mists are born,"*

    Song.

when we have heard him sing of these, and have understood with our heart, they have an added meaning for us.  We love and understand the song of the skylark better for having heard Shelley sing of it.

    “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.

    “Higher still and higher,
        From the earth thou springest
    Like a cloud of fire;
        The deep blue thou wingest,
    And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

    “In the golden lightening
        Of the sunken sun,
    O’er which clouds are brightening,
        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.
    . . . . . . . 
    “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
    In sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 

    “Like a high-born maiden
        In a palace tower,
    Soothing her love-laden
        Soul a secret hour
    With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower.
    . . . . . . . 
    “Teach us, sprite or bird,
        What sweet thoughts are thine;
    I have never heard
        Praise of love or wine
    That panted forth a flood