Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Songs of Greater Britain (1899). III. The Skylark

Cicely Fox-Smith (1882–1954)

WINGED seraph of the summer heaven,

Whose wondrous rapture, wild and long,

A hundred bards in vain have striven

To prison in a song!

How can they tell, with all their art,

What passions make thy glad throat swell

That, throbbing at thy fiery heart,

Thou feel’st but canst not tell?

How can we picture in our dreams

The joys that thro’ thy pæan glow

That joy that soars so high it seems

About to break in woe?

Sing on, wild bird, thy wild glad song

That fills our eyes with sudden tears,

While back upon the fancy throng

Memories of vanished years!

Sing on, sing on, for ever free!

We cannot know what thou dost sing

And better it should ever be

An undiscovered thing.