Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt,
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt--
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
THE SANDS OF DEE.
I have often had the pleasure of riding across the coast from Chester,
England, to Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales, where stretch "The Sands
of Dee" (Charles Kingsley, 1819-75). These purple sands at low tide
stretch off into the sea miles away, and are said to be full of
quicksands.
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