The Skylark
John Trafford
Clegg
Clegg, John Trafford
J. T. C.
Metadata research and editing
DVPP Project Team
Kailey
Fukushima
University of Victoria Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry Project
Victoria, BC, Canada
In the public domain
Poet attribution: Chambers’s Journal ledger indicates that J. T. Clegg was paid 10s for the poem (NLS Dep 341/369). (AC)
Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal
4
17
859
384
Hark to the dropping melody
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The Skylar
k.
Hark to the dropping melody
From the brown Lark above yon grimy cloud !
Ambitious traveller ! for earth too proud,
Wouldst join the angels’ psalmody ?
Or is the steadfast sun the magnet bright
That ever to the sky attracts thy flight ?
Sing on, thou joyous reveller !
Pouring tumultuous from thy reedy throat
Torrents of sound : who heedless hears thy note,
Is dull, or senseless driveller !
’Twould seem thou hadst indeed heard heaven’s song,
For strains like thine can ne’er from earth have sprung.
Here, on the cool grass lazily
Outstretched, I listen to thy happy note,
And pleasant images upon me float,
Watching thy form, that hazily
Shews through slow-moving vapours high above,
As up in fluttering spirals thou dost move.
So once my soul, awakening
From thoughtless slumber, sprung to greet the morn,
And from its depths a merry lay was born ;
Hope stood before me, beckoning,
And led me forth along a golden way,
Where sunlight never ceased to beam and play.
Would that all we, here wandering
About this earth, could sing away our days,
And ne’er in discontent our voices raise,
Short life in sorrow squandering ;
And would that we to toil as blithely bent,
As thou ascendest through the firmament.
The nightingale’s sweet sorrowing
Lulls us with fantasy and idle dreams,
Till all the world to our charmed vision seems—
From solemn music borrowing
Soft magic—a fair place of pleasant pain,
Wherein to dream, and sigh, and dream again.
Thy song is bright and vigorous,
Seeming to summon men to active lives,
Boldly proclaiming he who nobly strives
’Gainst evils that beleaguer us,
And faces manfully his worldly work,
Shall prosper well—they ill who duty shirk.
When twilight shades cross drearily
The sinking day, and all afield is still,
Save the vexed murmur of the restless rill,
Like stone thou fallest, wearily,
To earth, and, steeping in the dew thy breast,
Secretly creepest to thy hidden nest.
J. T. C.