THE NIGHTINGALE;A VERSATIONAL POEM, WRITTEN IN APRIL, 1798.
No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen Light, no obscure trembling hues.
e, we will rest on this old mossy Bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beh,
But hear no murmuring: it ?ows silently
Oer its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
A balmy night! and tho the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the greeh, and we shall ?nd
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,
"Most musical, most melancholy"[1] Bird!
A melancholy Bird? O idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
--But some night-wandering Man, whose heart iercd
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper lected love,
(And so, poor Wretch! ?lld all things with himself
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrows) he and such as he
First namd these notes a melancholy strain;
And many a poet echoes the ceit,
Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme
When he had better far have stretchd his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell
By sun or moonlight, to the in?uxes
Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And of his fame fetful! so his fame
Should share in natures immortality,
A venerable thing! and so his song
Should make all nature lovelier, and itself
Be lovd, like nature!--But twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical
Who lose the deepning twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still
Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs
Oer Philomelas pity-pleading strains.
My Friend, and my Friends Sister! we have learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Natures sweet voices always full of love
And joyais 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-t, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its musid 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 king-cups grow withihs.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many Nightingales: and far and near
In wood and thicket over the wide grove
They ansrovoke each others songs--
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug
And one low piping sound more sweet than all--
Stirring the air with su harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost
Fet it was not day! On moonlight bushes,
Whose dewy lea?ts are but half disclosd,
You may perce behold them owigs,
Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
Glistning, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.
A most gentle maid
Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the Castle, and at latest eve,
(Even like a Lady vowd and dedicate
To something more than nature in the