Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Dost thou once more essay Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick Thy flight; and feel come over thee, for home,

Poor fugitive, the feathery change ; She stood in tears amid the alien corn: Once more; and once more make resound, The same that oft-times hath

With love and hate, triumph and agony, Charmed magic casements opening on the Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale?

foam Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn. Listen, Eugenia

How thick the bursts come crowding through Forlorn! the very word is like a bell,

the leaves!
To toll me back from thee to my sole self! | Again—thou hearest!
Adieu! the Fancy can not cheat so well Eternal passion!
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Eternal pain!

MATTHEW ARNOLD
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:

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE DOVE. Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music, do I wake or sleep? O NIGHTINGALE! thou surely art

JOHN KEATS. 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
PHILOMELA.

Had helped thee to a valentine

A song in mockery, and despite Hark! ah, the Nightingale!

Of shades, and dews, and silent night, The tawny-throated !

And steady bliss, and all the loves Hark! froin that moonlit cedar what a burst! Now sleeping in these peaceful groves. What triumph! hark-what pain!

I heard a stock-dove sing or say O wanderer from a Grecian shore,

His homely tale, this very day;
Still—after many years, in distant lands— His voice was buried among trees,
Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain Yet to be come at by the breeze:
That wild, unquer shed, deep-sunken, old. He did not cease; but cooed—and cooed;
world pain-

And somewhat pensively he wooed:
Say, will it never heal?

He sang of love, with quiet blending,
And can this fragrant lawn,

Slow to begin, and never ending; With its cool trees, and night,

Of serious faith, and inward glee; And the sweet, tranquil Thames,

That was the song, the song for me! And moonshine, and the dew,

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. To thy racked heart and brain

Afford no balm ?

Dost thou to-night behold,

THE NIGHTINGALE. Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,

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,

Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. With hot cheeks and seared eyes,

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;

And I know a grove A balmy night! and though the stars be dim, Of large extent, hard by a castle huge, Yet let us think upon the vernal showers Which the great lord inhabits not; and so That gladden the green earth, and we shall This grove is wild with tangling underwood; find

And the trim walks are broken up; and grass, A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. Thin grass and kingcups grow within the paths. And hark! the Nightingale begins its song, But never elsewhere in one place I knew “Most musical, most melancholy" bird ! So many nightingales. And far and near, A melancholy bird! Oh, idle thought! In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, In Nature there is nothing melancholy. They answer and provoke each other's song, But some night-wandering man, whose heart With skirmish and capricious passayings, was pierced

And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, And one low piping sound more sweet than Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

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

That should you close your eyes, you might And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale almost Of his own sorrow)—he, and such as he, Forget it was not day! On moon-lit bushes, First named these notes a melancholy strain. Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed, And many a poet echoes the conceit You may perchance behold them on the twigs, Poet who hath been building up the rhyme Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both When he had better far have stretched his bright and full, limbs

Glistening, while many a glowworm in the Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

shade
By sun or moonlight; to the influxes Lights up her love-torch.
Of shapes, and sounds, and shifting elements,
Surrendering his whole spirit; of his song

A most gentle maid, And of his fame forgetful! so his fame

Who dwelleth in her hospitable home Should share in Nature's immortality

Ilard by the castle, and at latest eve, A venerable thing!--and so his song

(Even like a lady vowed and dedicate Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself

To something more than Nature in the grove,) Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;

Glides through the pathways—she knows all

their notes And youths and maidens most poetical, Who lose the deepening twilights of the That gentle maid! and oft, a moment's space, Spring

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud, In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still,

Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon, Full of meek sympathy, must heave their Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky sighs

With one sensation, and these wakeful birds O’er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

As if some sudden gale had swept at once My friend, and thou, our sister! we have A hundred airy harps ! And she hath learnt

watched A different lore: we may not thus profane Many a nightingale perched giddily Nature's sweet voices, always full of love On blossomy twig still swinging from the And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale breeze, That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates

And to that motion tune his wanton song, With fast thick warble his delicious notes, Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head. As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth Farewell, 0 warbler! till to-morrow eve; His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul And you, my friends ! farewell, a short fareOf all its music!

well!

THE NIGHTINGALE.

57

Translation of John BOWRING.

We have been loitering long and pleasantly, O charming creature rare!
And now for our dear homes.—That strain Can aught with thee compare ?
again!

Thou art all song—thy breast
Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe, Thrills for one month o'th' year—is tranquil
Who, capable of no articulate sound,

all the rest. Mars all things with his imitative lisp,

Theo wondrous we may callHow he would place his hand beside his ear,

Most wondrous this of all, His little hand, the small forefinger up,

That such a tiny throat And bid us listen! And I deem it wise

Should wake so loud a sound, and pour sc To make him Nature's playmate. He knows

loud a note. well

MARIA TESSELSCHADE VISSCHER. (Dutch) 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,

THE NIGHTINGALE.
And he beheld the moon; and, hushed at once,
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently, THE rose looks out in the valley,
While his fair eyes, that swam with undrop And thither will I go!
ped tears,

To the rosy vale, where the nightingale Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam! Well!-

Sings his song of woe.
It is a father's tale : But if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow

The virgin is on the river side,

Culling the lemons pale : up Familiar with these songs, that with the

Thither--yes! thither will I go, night

To the rosy vale, where the nightingale He may associate joy.—Once more, farewell,

Sings his song of woe. Sweet Nightingale! Once more, my friends!

The fairest fruit her hand hath culled, farewell.

'Tis for her lover all :
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Thither-yes! thither will I go,
To the rosy vale, where the nightingale,

Sings his song of woe.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

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.

Prize thou the nightingale,
Who soothes thee with his tale,

And wakes the woods around;
A singing feather hewa winged and wander-

ing sound;
Whose tender caroling
Sets all ears listening

Unto that living lyre,
Whence flow the airy notes his ecstacies in-

spire;
Whose shrill, capricious song
Breathes like a flute along,

With many a careless tone-
Music of thousand tongues, formed by one

tongue alone.

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

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!

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 dispnte
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.

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.

ear."

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, THE NIGHTINGALE'S DEPARTURE.

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Sweet poet of the woods-a long adieu !

Though the dark night is near.
Farewell, soft minstrel of the early year!
Ah! ’t will be long ere thou shalt sing anew,

And soon that toil shall end ;
And pour thy music on “the night's dull Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and

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

bend, Or whether silent in our groves you dwell,

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. The pensive Muse shall own thee for her mate,

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven And still protect the song she loves so well. Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my With cautious step the love-lorn youth shall

heart glide

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, Through the long brake that shades thy

And shall not soon depart: mossy nest; And shepherd girls from eyes profane shall

IIe who, from zone to zone, hide

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain The gentle bird who sings of pity best :

flight, For still thy voice shall soft affections move, In the long way that I must tread alone, And still be dear to sorrow, and to love!

Will lead my steps aright.
CHARLOTTE SMITH.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.