That from the imperishable source
Precipitate their headlong course,
Sprinkle the flood with silvery spray,

And in the current melt away.

Now in a glassy sheet it glides;

Now in some Naiad grotto hides;

Awhile the ivied hollow slakes,

Then from its dark concealment breaks,

And flowery marsh and meadow laves

With all its labyrinth of waves.

Foaming, now, it rushes by ;

Now it slumbers silently.

Athwart those mazes serpentine

The lonely angler sweeps his line;
And stooping low, in airy ring,
The swallow dips her taper wing.

Now every hue and form retires,

And in uncertain gloom expires.

For lurking Darkness hastes to fling
Her shade o'er Nature's colouring.

The woods in lofty grandeur towering,

Seem woven with the twilight shade: O'er mossy mount and dell embowering, They stretch their leafy colonnade,

And tissued with the arching sky,

Inweave a solemn canopy.

How silent is the gloom! How deep
The shades that softly close!

It is the hour of Nature's sleep;

It is the world's repose.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

"Ah me! ah me! the nightingale's sweet lot!
A sweet existence that lamenteth not."
ÆSCHYLUS.

AGAMEMNON.

O RARE Sir Nightingale, what love-sick bard,

Keeping in vain his nightly guard,

Did first mistake for notes of kindred sadness

Thy song of love and gladness?

That song

of compass and of

power,

Which startling midnight's sober hour,

The owls and bats, with jealous hate,

Those birds of night legitimate,

Resent as far too light and free,

And savouring much of revelry.

Thou sad! whose heart such love discloses !

Thou, spring's gay courtier! Thou, the rose's

Fond paramour in foreign bowers—

Though, in this Christian land of ours,
Thou dost so sweetly preach, in sooth,

Of nuptial bliss and wedded truth,

In notes that seem to tell its blisses

In set-to-music kisses.

Thy trill, and jug, and gurgling murmur,
Now changed to accents louder, firmer,
Like cuckoo-call; now higher still,

In lark-like strain or whistle shrill,
Responsive to thy lady-mate;

(For who but she the voice can own,

Which doth so sweetly iterate

That same wild, touching monotone?) Then, mellow'd down, an under-strain,

Like birdish laughter, as again

The summons comes, a sweet soprana
From thy most fond sultana ;-

O wondrous bird! thy varied measure,
The very soul of pleasure,

Who but an unblest lover could

Have fancied set in minor mood?

Who but the votary of folly

Have call'd it melancholy?

To me that song denotes no less
Than mirth and inborn happiness,
That dreams the peaceful night away
In living o'er the joys of day.

To me it a long tale unravels

Of airy voyages, Persian travels,

Gay pranks in summer's fairest bowers,
And broken hearts among the flowers;
And then of England's landscape mild,
Spring's virgin beauties undefiled,

Her violet-banks, her blue-bell glades,
Her daisied meads, her greenwood shades,
The hedge-rows where the may is blooming,
With tenderest scent the air perfuming,