Class II. NIGHTINGALE. 497 



serve to compose part of the solemn scenery of 

 his Penseroso ; when he describes it 



In her saddest sweetest plight. 

 Smoothing the rugged brow of nighty 

 While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke. 

 Gently o'er th' accustom'd oak ; 

 Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly. 

 Most musical, most melancholy ! 

 Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, 

 I woo to hear thy evening song. 



In another place he styles it the solemn bird; 

 and again speaks of it, 



As the wakeful bird 

 Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid. 

 Tunes her nocturnal note. 



The reader must excuse a few more quota- 

 tions from the same poet, on the same subject; 

 the first describes the approach of evening, and 

 the retiring of all animals to their repose : 



Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird. 

 They to their grassy couch, these to their nests 

 Were slunk ; all but the wakeful nightingale^ 

 She all night long her amorous descant sung. 



When Eve passed the irksome night preced- 

 ing her fall, she, in a dream, imagines herself 

 thus reproached with losing the beauties of the . - ~ 



night by indulging too long a repose : 



Why sleep' St thou. Eve? now is the pleasant tiniei 

 The cool, the silent, save where silence yields 



VOL. I. • 2 .K 



