12 BIRDS AND POETS 
O throat! O trembling throat! 
Sound clearer through the atmosphere f 
Pierce the woods, the earth ; 
Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I want. 
Shake out, carols ! 
Solitary here — the night’s carols ! 
Carols of lonesome love ! Death’s carols [ 
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon ! 
Oh, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea f 
O reckless, despairing carols. 
But soft! sink low! 
Soft! let me just murmur ; 
And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea ; 
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, 
So faint —I must be still, be stil to listen ! 
But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to 
me. 
Hither, my love ! 
Here Iam! Here! 
With this just-sustained note I announce myself to you 
This gentle call is for you, my love, for you. 
Do not be decoyed elsewhere 
That is the whistle of the wind —it is not my voice ; 
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray ; 
Those are the shadows of leaves. 
O darkness! Oh in vain! 
Oh I am very sick and sorrowful. 
The bird that occupies the second place to the 
nightingale in British poetical literature is the sky- 
lark, a pastoral bird as the Philomel is an arboreal, 
—a creature of light and air and motion, the com- 
panion of the plowman, the shepherd, the harvester, 
— whose nest is in the stubble and whose tryst is 
in the clouds. Its life affords that kind of contrast 
