17'2 IJIE FKATIIEKEI) -JKlliES. 



■When the clear moon, with C'ytherean smile 

 Emerging from an eastern cloud, has shot 

 A look of pure henevolence and joy 

 Into the heart of night. Yes, I have stood 

 And marked thy varied note, and frequent pause, 

 Thy brisk and melancholy mood, with sold 

 Sincerely pleased. And O, methought, no note 

 Can equal thine, sweet bird, of all that sing 

 How- easily the chief ! Yet have I heard 

 AVhat pleases me still more — the human voice 

 In serious sweetness flowing from the heart 

 Of unaffected woman. I could hark 

 Till the round world dissolved to the pure strain 

 Love teaches, gentle modesty inspii'es. 



Coleridge has told us, ia glo^ving language, his estimate of this favoured and favourite 

 songster : — 



And, hark ! the nightingale begins its song, 

 " Most musical, most melancholy" bu'd. 

 A melancholy bird ? oh ! idle thought ! 

 In nature there is nothing melancholy. 



'Tis the merry nightingale 



That crowds, and hunies, 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-ehant, and disburden 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, 

 Thm grass and kingcups, grow within the paths; 

 But never, elsewhere, iu one place I knew 

 iSo many nightingales ; and far and near. 

 In wood and thicket, over the wide grove. 

 They answer and provoke each other's song 

 With skirmishes and capricious passagings, 

 And murmurs musical and swift, jug, jug. 

 And one low piping sound more sweet than all — 

 Stirring the air with such an harmony. 

 That should you close your eyes, you might almost 

 Forget it was not day ! On moonlit bushes. 

 Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed. 

 You may perchance behold them on the twigs. 

 Their bright, bright ej'es, their cj'cs both bright and full, 

 Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade 

 Lights up her love-torch. " 



,\nil ofl a moment's space, 

 Wliat time the nionn was lost behind a cloud, 

 Hath heard a ])ause of silence ; till the moon 

 Emerging, hath awakcn'd earth and sky 

 With one sensation, and these wakeful birds 

 Have all burst forth in choral niinstreUy, 

 As ifscmie sudden gale had swept at once 

 A hundred uiry lunps ! 



It is strange that this lively bird should ever be thought melanclioly ; no bird sings 

 when it is sad ; its solitary halnls and its lovo of the night have probably given rise to 



