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 blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
Dad introduced me to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s To A Skylark in Grade 11. I remember performing a reading of it for my academic challenge class accompanied by a classical music cassette playing in the background. It remains one of Dad’s, and my own, favourite poems.
Keats’ transcendent poem in its entirety, along with Dad’s two accompanying pictures and comment, on his blog here: https://tothineownselfbetrue.ca/2024/03/13/shelley-at-his-most-inspired-to-a-skylark-1820/