THE NIGHTINGALE.
APRIL, 1798.
No cloud, no relic 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.
* * * ’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 lone chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music!
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 king-cups 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,
And one low, piping sound, more sweet than all,
Stirring the air with such a harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moonlit 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 glow-worm 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 blossoming twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.