Shelley's Skylark

Listen to: 

Shelley's Skylark (1:44)

by Thomas Hardy 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March, 1887

   Somewhere afield here something lies

   In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust

   That moved a poet to prophecies—

   A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

   The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,

   And made immortal through times to be;—

   Though it only lived like another bird,

   And knew not its immortality.

   Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell—

   A little ball of feather and bone;

   And how it perished, when piped farewell,

   And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

   Maybe it rests in the loam I view,

   Maybe it throbs in a myrtle’s green,

   Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue

   Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

   Go find it, faeries, go and find

   That tiny pinch of priceless dust,

   And bring a casket silver-lined,

   And framed of gold that gems encrust;

   And we will lay it safe therein,

   And consecrate it to endless time;

   For it inspired a bard to win

   Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.