of rapture so divine.
    . . . . . . . 
    “We look before and after,
        And pine for what is not: 
    Our sincerest laughter
        With some pain is fraught;
    The 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.

    “Better than all measures
        Of delightful sound,
    Better than all treasures
        That in books are found,
    Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

    “Teach me half the gladness
        That thy brain must know;
    Such harmonious madness
        From my lips would flow,
    The world would listen then, as I am listening now!”

As we listen to the lark singing we look upward and see the light summer clouds driving over the blue sky.  They, too, have a song which once the listening poet heard.

    “I bring fresh showers for the thirsty flowers,
        From the seas and the streams;
    I bear light shades for the leaves when laid
        In their noonday dreams. 
    From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
        The sweet buds every one,
    When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
        As she dances about the sun. 
    I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
        And whiten the green plains under,
    And then again I dissolve it in rain,
        And laugh as I pass in thunder.

    I sift the snow on the mountains below,
        And their great pines groan aghast,
    And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
        While asleep in the arms of the blast. 
    Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
        Lightning my pilot sits,
    In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
        It struggles and howls at fits;
    Over earth and ocean with gentle motion
        This pilot is guiding me,
    Lured by the love of the genii that move
        In the depths of the purple sea;
    Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
        Over the lakes and the plains,
    Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
        The spirit he love remains;
    And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,
        Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
    . . . . . . . 
    “I bind the sun’s throne with the burning zone,
        And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl: 
    The volcanoes are dim, and the starts reel and swim
        When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl
    From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
        Over a torrent sea,
    Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
        The mountains its columns be. 
    The triumphal arch through which I march,
        With hurricane, fire, and snow,
    When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
        In the million-coloured bow;
    The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
        While the moist earth was laughing below.