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 night; 

 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 time, 

 The cool, the silent, save where silence yields 



VOL. I, 2 K 



