Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who,
From life to life, must still pursue
Your happiness;—­for thus alone 15
Can Ariel ever find his own. 
From Prospero’s enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples, he
Lit you o’er the trackless sea, 20
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor. 
When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell
Than deserted Ariel. 
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth,
Ariel guides you o’er the sea
Of life from your nativity. 30
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps, and served your will;
Now, in humbler, happier lot, 35
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned, for some fault of his,
In a body like a grave;—­
From you he only dares to crave, 40
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile today, a song tomorrow.

The artist who this idol wrought,
To echo all harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep 45
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast, 50
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree,—­
O that such our death may be!—­
Died in sleep, and felt no pain, 55
To live in happier form again: 
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved Guitar,
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully, 60
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamoured tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learned all harmonies 65
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills, 70
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound, 75
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way.—­
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well