THE NIGHTINGALE. 



A melancholy bird ! oh ! idle thought! 

 In nature there is nothing melancholy. 



'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-chaunt, 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 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 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 moonlight 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. 



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 awaken'd 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 ! 



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