Classic Poem

I STOOD knee-deep within a field of grain,
And felt a sudden flash of facile wings
That off the ground rose straight into the blue.
And looking, saw it was the lark, a wight
In all my days I had not glimpsed at home,
And now must find beyond the foam-white seas
For the first time. This child of ecstasy
Shook down roulades of song, and clove the air
Up, up and ever up toward very heaven,
A speck of buoyant life against the sky,
And bird-kind's one embodiment of soul
In God-aspiring flight. Across my mind
Rushed Shakespeare's hymn and Shelley's heavenly lay,
Wherein this bird, etherealized, becomes
More beautiful, and less of mortal mold;
Until half-dazed I stood, nor hardly knew
Whether I heard the descant of the lark,
Or those dear singers of the human race
Make subtle music for my brooding ear.