The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1881-06-04
THE LARK ASCENDING.
BY GEORGE MEREnIrH

BE rises and begins to round.
ne ne drops the silver chain of sound,
VI many links without break
IN chlrrup, whistle, slur and shake
All interviewed and spreading wide.
Like Water-dimples down tide
Nhere ripple ripple overcurls
And eddy into eddy whirls;
A press of hurried notes that run
30 neet they scarce are more than one
Yet changingly the trills repeat
and llnger ringing while they feet,
Sweet to the quick o. the ear. and dear
To her beyond the handmade ear.
Who sits beside our inner springs
Too often dry for this he brings
Which seems the very jet of earth
At sight of sun, her music's mirth.
AS up he wings the spiral stair,
A song OF light, and pierces air
with fountain ardor, fountain play
10 reach the shining tops of day,
And drink in everything discerned.
An ecstasy TO music turned,
lmpeiled by what his happy bill
Dlsperses; drinking, showering still.
Unthlnking save that he may give
His voice the outlet, there to live
Renewed In endless notes of glee,
80 thirsty of his voice is he,
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow,
Inc tumult of the heart to hear
Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,
And know the pleasure sprinked bright
BY simple singing of delight,
Shrill, ineffective, unrestrained,
Kapt, ringing, on the jet sustained
Without a break, without a fall,
Sweet slvery, sheer lyrical,
perennial, quayering up the chord
Like myriad dews of sunny sward
mat trembling into fullness shine,
And sparkle dropping argentine;
Sucn Woolng as the ear receives,
From zephyr caught in choric leaves
VI aspens when their chattering net
is flushed to white with shiyers wet;
And such the water-spirit's chime
On mountain heights in mornings prime,
loo freshly sweet to seem excess,
100 animate to need stress;
But wider over many heads
The starry voice ascending spreads,
Awakening, as it wakes thin,
The best in us to him akin;
And every face to watch him raised
Puts on the light of children praised
So rich our human pleasure ripes
When sweetness on sincereness pipes,
Though naught be promised from the seas,
But only a soft ruffiing breeze
Sweep glittering on still content,
Serenity in ravishment.
For singing till his heaven fills.
'Tis love of earth that he instine,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup;
And he the wine which over1ows
TO lift us with him as he goes,
But not from earth is he divorced,
He joyfully to fly enforced;
The woods and brooks, the sheen and kline
He Is, the hills, the human line,
Inc meadows green, the fallows brown,
The dream of labor in the town;
He sings the sap, the quicllened veins,
Inc wedding song of sun and rains
He l5, the dance of children, thanks
OF sewers, shout of primrose-banks,
And eye of vioets while they breathe;
All these the circling song will wreathe,
And you shall hear the herb and tree
The better heart of men shall see,
Shall feel celestially, as long
AS you crave nothing save the sorg.
Was never voice of ours could say
Our inmost in the sweetest way
Like yonder voice aloft, and link
All hearers in the song they drink;
Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,
Our passion is too full in food
We want the key of his wild note
OF truthful in tuneful throat,
The song seraphically free
OF faint of personality,
So pure that it salutes the suns
The voice of one for millions
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice.
Yet men have we, whom we revere
Now names, and men still housing here,
whose lives, by many battle-dint
Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,
Yield substance, though they sing not sweet
For song our highest heaven to greet
Whom heavenly singing gives US new
Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,
From hrmest base to furthest leap,
Because their love of earth is deep,
And they are warriors in accord
With life to serve and pass reward
SO touching purest, and 80 heard
In the brains reflex of yon bird
Wherefore their soul in me- or mine,
Through self-forgetfulness divine
In them, that song aloft maintains,
To i'll the sky and thrill the plains
With showerings drawn from human stores
As he to silence nearer scars,
Ext nds the world at wings and dome,
More spacious making more our home,
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
-FOrtnightLy ReuietC