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THE NIGHTINGALE.

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick

for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn:

The same that oft-times hath

Dost thou once more essay Thy flight; and feel come over thee, Poor fugitive, the feathery change; Once more; and once more make resound, With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Charmed magic casements opening on the Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale?

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How thick the bursts come crowding through
the leaves!
Again-thou hearest!
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!

MATTHEW ARNOLD

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE DOVE.

O NIGHTINGALE! thou surely art
A creature of a "fiery heart";

These notes of thine,-they pierce and pierce:
Tumultuous harmony and fierce!

Thou sing'st as if the god of wine
Had helped thee to a valentine-

A song in mockery, and despite

Of shades, and dews, and silent night,
And steady bliss, and all the loves

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst! Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.

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, unquer ched, 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,

Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,

I heard a stock-dove sing or say
His homely tale, this very day;
His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come at by the breeze:
He did not cease; but cooed-and cooed;
And somewhat pensively he wooed:
He sang of love, with quiet blending,
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith, and inward glee;
That was the song, the song for me!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

No cloud, no relict of the sunken day

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? Distinguishes the West; no long thin slip

Dost thou again peruse,

With hot cheeks and seared eyes,

Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,

shame?

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 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 graes,
Thin grass and kingeups grow within the paths.

And hark! the Nightingale begins its song-But never elsewhere in one place I knew
"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,

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,
And one low piping sound more sweet than
all-

(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with Stirring the air with such a harmony,

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-
Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
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
Spring

the

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!

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.

A most gentle maid,
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!

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Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe, Thrills for one month o' th' year-is tranquil Who, capable of no articulate sound,

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all the rest.

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MARIA TESSELSCHADE VISSCHER. (Dutch)

The evening-star; and once when he awoke Translation of JOHN BOWRING.

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,
And he beheld the moon; and, hushed at once,
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes, that swam with undrop-
ped 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! farewell.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

PRIZE thou the nightingale,

Who soothes thee with his tale,
And wakes the woods around;

A singing feather he-a winged and wandering sound;

Whose tender caroling
Sets all ears listening

Unto that living lyre,

Whence flow the airy notes his ecstacies inspire;

Whose shrill, capricious song
Breathes like a flute along,

With many a careless tone

Music of thousand tongues, formed by one

tongue alone.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

THE rose looks out in the valley,
And thither will I go!

To the rosy vale, where the nightingale
Sings his song of woe.

The virgin is on the river side,

Culling the lemons pale: Thither yes! thither will I go,

To the rosy vale, where the nightingale Sings his song of woe.

The fairest fruit her hand hath culled, 'Tis for her lover all:

Thither yes! thither will I go,

To the rosy vale, where the nightingale,
Sings his song of woe.

In her hat of straw, for her gentle swain,
She has placed the lemons pale:
Thither yes! thither will I go,
To the rosy vale, where the nightingale
Sings his song of woe.

GIL VICENTE (Portuguese)

Translation of JOHN BOWRING.

THE MOTHER NIGHTINGALE.

I HAVE seen a nightingale

On a sprig of thyme bewail, Seeing the dear nest, which was Hers alone, borne off, alas!

By a laborer; I heard,

For this outrage, the poor bird

Say a thousand mournful things
To the wind, which, on its wings,
From her to the guardian of the sky,
Bore her melancholy cry—
Bore her tender tears. She spake
As if her fond heart would break:
One while, in a sad, sweet note,
Gurgled from her straining throat,
She enforced her piteous tale,
Mournful prayer, and plaintive wail;
One while, with the shrill dispute
Quite outwearied, she was mute;
Then afresh, for her dear brood,
Her harmonious shrieks renewed.
Now she winged it round and round;
Now she skimmed along the ground;
Now, from bough to bough, in haste,
The delighted robber chased,
And, alighting in his path,
Seemed to say, 'twixt grief and wrath,
"Give me back, fierce rustic rude-
Give me back my pretty brood!"
And I saw the rustic still
Answered, "That, I never will!"

ESTEVAN MANUEL DE VILLEGAS. (Spanish) Translation of J. H. WIFFEN.

THE NIGHTINGALE'S DEPARTURE.

SWEET poet of the woods-a long adieu!

Farewell, soft minstrel of the early year! Ah! 't will be long ere thou shalt sing anew, And pour thy music on "the night's dull ear."

TO A WATERFOWL.

WHITHER, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou

pursue

Thy solitary way!

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee

wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast.The desert and illimitable air,—

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

Whether on Spring thy wandering flights And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall

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bend,

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my

heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart:

He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

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