On First Having Heard the Skylark

Not knowing he rose from earth, not having seen him rise,
Not knowing the fallow furrow was his home,
And that high wing, untouchable, untainted,
A wing of earth, with the warm loam
Closely acquainted,
I shuddered at his cry and caught my heart.
Relentless out of heaven his sweet crying like a crystal dart
Was launched against me. Scanning the empty sky
I stood with thrown-back head until the world reeled.
Still, still he sped his unappeasable shafts against my breast without a shield.
He cried forever from his unseen throat
Between me and the sun.
He would not end his singing, he would not have done.
“Serene and pitiless note, whence, whence are you?”
I cried. “Alas, these arrows, how fast they fall!
Ay, me, beset by angels in unequal fight,
Alone high on the shaven down surprised, and not a tree in sight!”
Even as I spoke he was revealed
Above me in the bright air,
A dark articulate atom in the mute enormous blue,
A mortal bird, flying and singing in the morning there.
Even as I spoke I spied him, and I knew,
And called him by his name;
“Blithe Spirit!” I cried. Transfixed by more than mortal
I fell; I lay among the foreign daisies pink and small,
spearsAnd wept, staining their innocent faces with fast-flowing tears.