Land of my Fathers! I bid thee farewell,

As

my

bark swift on her snowy wing flies;

Thy loftiest mountain, thy lowliest dell,
Is dear as the light to my eyes.

G

XV.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

O NIGHTINGALE, that singest all night long,
Nor ceasest with the opening eye of Day!
Of thee I oft shall think when far away,
And the wild tumult of thy notes that throng
With breathless haste in thy delicious song,
Thrilling with gladness even the heart of May!
And then those liquid sounds that seem to say,
"In this soft bosom dwells no thought of wrong.”
As of my native soil for many a year,

And thee, sweet Bird, I take a last farewell,
Thy melody is like an evening bell,

The loveliest, and the last sweet note I hear:
Thy soft low pipe will haunt me in the breeze
That waves in languor o'er far Indian seas.

NOTES.

I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

WORDSWORTH.

THE scene attempted to be sketched in this Sonnet lies between Villeneuve-sur-Yonne and Joigny. The whole drive, of about four leagues, is extremely beautiful. The road passes all the way through vineyards, variegated with walnut and apple trees. But the last part of the stage, as we approach Joigny, is eminently beautiful. At the season in which I first saw it, early in the month of June, and in the evening of a very delicious day, it would have been splendid, but that it was softened by the mellow yet glowing light of the setting sun. Rivers are always beautiful; and the Yonne reminded me of many of our own delicious streams: it winds below the road through green meadows with that natural and easy gracefulness which is inimitable by art; while its banks are crowned with vineyards, the higher parts of which, when I saw them, were