Ecstatic Heights in Thought and Rhyme

 Shelley's Skylark
by Thomas Hardy

(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.