Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown. Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Dost thou again peruse, With hot cheeks and seared eyes,
The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more essay
Thy flight; and feel come over thee,
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for Poor fugitive, the feathery change; home,
Once more; and once more make resound, With love and hate, triumph and agony,
Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale?
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Again-thou hearest! Eternal passion! Eternal pain!
No cloud, no relict of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West; no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on-this old mossy bridge;
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring; it flows silently
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still;
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the Nightingale begins its song
Here, through the moonlight on this English Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
When he had better far have stretched his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
By sun or moonlight; to the influxes
Of shapes, and sounds, and shifting elements,
Surrendering his whole spirit; of his song
And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in Nature's immortality-
A venerable thing!-and so his song
Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deepening twilights of the Spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still,
Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
My friend, and thou, our sister! we have learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance! "Tis the merry Nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music!
And I know a grove Of large extent, hard by a castle huge, Which the great lord inhabits not; and so This grove is wild with tangling underwood; And the trim walks are broken up; and grass, Thin grass and kingcups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many nightingales. And far and near, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's song, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the castle, and at latest eve,
(Even like a lady vowed and dedicate
To something more than Nature in the grove,)
Glides through the pathways-she knows all their
notes,
That gentle maid! and oft, a moment's space,
What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon,
Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
With one sensation, and these wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if some sudden gale had swept at once
A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched
Many a nightingale perched giddily
On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.
Farewell, O warbler! till to-morrow eve;
And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear homes.-That strain
again!
Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! And I deem it wise
To make him Nature's playmate. He knows well
The evening-star; and once when he awoke
In most distressful mood, (some inward pain Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream,)
I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,
And one low piping sound more sweet than And he beheld the moon; and, hushed at once,
Stirring the air with such a harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might
Forget it was not day! On moon-lit bushes,
Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,
You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright
and full,
Glistening, while many a glowworm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.
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