166 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
" Cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded," 
"Before the spirit-sighted countenance 
Of Milton didst thou pass from that sad scene 
Beyond whose night he saw with a dejected mein." 
And what a starry " night " was that thou didst disclose to 
him ! How great a firmament, moving and mingled, popu- 
lous with burning spheres ! And what a dawn is that which 
has leaped forth from it — in flames, in purple, and in music 
over Earth ! We see it to have been both with Milton and 
his own loved Philomel, that their midnight song 
" begins anew 
Its strain when otlier harmonies stopt short 
Leave the dinned air vibrating silvery," 
To both, the prerogative has been given, as a dominion over 
that ominous, awful pause 'twixt Life and Light, 
" To satiate the hungry dark with melody." 
With both it is a solemn minstrelsy — solemn and liquid from 
its shadowy source — pregnant and high as prophesy. The 
Nightingale 
"The hght-winged Driad of the trees," 
sitting and singing 'neath the moon, will make the long- 
drawn shades to stir, and night's deep bosom palpitate with 
bliss. In its rapt song, fluent and rounded like the roll 
of waters going free, the fountain of its heart comes forth — 
now the tide is full and slow, up-swelling through the dusky 
void — then it is rippled out in low, sweet laughings, and 
again bursts in the shrilly ring of jubilant loudest sympho- 
nies. What a joy it is beneath the " visiting moon," 
" The singing of that happy niglitingale 
In this sweet forest, from the golden close 
Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail, 
Thus interfused upon tlie silentness," 
