To the Nightingale.

O NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes, that close the eye of day,

First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, Portend success in love. Oh, if Jove's will Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate

Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet hadst no reason why. Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I. JOHN MILTON.

Address to the Nightingale.

As it fell upon a day,

In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,

Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,

Trees did grow, and plants did spring;
Every thing did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn;
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry;
Teru, teru, by-and-by;
That, to hear her so complain,
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs, so lively shown,
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah! (thought I) thou mourn'st in vain;
None takes pity on thy pain;

Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee;
Ruthless bears, they will not cheer thee;

King Pandion, he is dead;

All thy friends are lapped in lead:
All thy fellow-birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing!

Whilst as fickle Fortune smiled,
Thou and I were both beguiled,

Every one that flatters thee

Is no friend in misery.
Words are easy, like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find.
Every man will be thy friend

Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend;
But if stores of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him call;
And with such-like flattering,
"Pity but he were a king."
If he be addict to vice,
Quickly him they will entice;
But if Fortune once do frown,
Then farewell his great renown:
They that fawned on him before,
Use his company no more.
He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need;
If thou sorrow he will weep,
If thou wake he cannot sleep.
Thus, of every grief in heart,
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.

RICHARD BARNFIELD.

Ode to a Nightingale.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk; Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-ward had sunk. 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thy happiness, That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of Summer in full-throated ease.

Oh for a draught of vintage that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burned
mirth!

Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth

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That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known— The weariness, the fever, and the fret;

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few sad, last gray hairs; Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs ;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee!

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards; Already with thee tender is the night,

And haply the queen-moon is on her throne, Clustered around by all her starry fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy

ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs; But, in embalmed darkness guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild: White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets, covered up in leaves;

And mid-May's oldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of bees on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now, more than ever, seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight, with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad,
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain — To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown. Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Dost thou again peruse, With hot cheeks and seared eyes,

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame ? Dost thou once more essay

Thy flight; and feel come over thee,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn:

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell,

To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the Fancy can not cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music-do I wake or sleep?

Once more; and once more make resound, With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale?

Philomela.

HARK! ah, the Nightingale!

The tawny-throated!

JOHN KEATS.

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! hark-what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still-after many years, in distant lands—
Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain

That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain —

Say, will it never heal? And can this fragrant lawn, With its cool trees, and night, And the sweet, tranquil Thames, And moonshine, and the dew, To thy racked heart and brain Afford no balm ?

Dost thou to-night behold,

The Nightingale.

No cloud, no relict of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West; no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge;
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring; it flows silently
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still;
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the Nightingale begins its song—
Most musical, most melancholy" bird!

A melancholy bird! Oh, idle thought!
In Nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale

Of his own sorrow)-he, and such as he,

First named these notes a melancholy strain. And many a poet echoes the conceit

grass,

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?

When he had better far have stretched his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moonlight; to the influxes
Of shapes, and sounds, and shifting elements,
Surrendering his whole spirit; of his song
And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in Nature's immortality –
A venerable thing!-and so his song
Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deepening twilights of the Spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still,
Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

My friend, and thou, our sister! we have learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance! '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-chant, and disburthen 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 so This grove is wild with tangling underwood ; And the trim walks are broken up; 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 skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,

A most gentle maid,

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Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the castle, and at latest eve,
(Even like a lady vowed and dedicate
To something more than Nature in the grove,)
Glides through the pathways-she knows all their
notes,

That gentle maid! 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 awakened 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! And she hath watched
Many a nightingale perched giddily

On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.

Farewell, O warbler! till to-morrow eve;
And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear homes.-That strain
again!

Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! And I deem it wise

To make him Nature's playmate. He knows well
The evening-star; and once when he awoke
In most distressful mood, (some inward pain
Had made up that strange thing, an infant's
dream,)

I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,

Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That should you close your eyes, you might

almost

Forget it was not day! On moon-lit 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.

Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes, that swarm with undropped
tears,

Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam! Well!-
It is a father's tale; but if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs, that with the night
He may associate joy. Once more, farewell,
Sweet Nightingale! Once more, my friends! fare-
well.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.