There is not the slightest exaggeration in these lines, for, exquisite as they are, they rather fall below than exceed the rapture and riot of countless nightingales in Italian woods by noon and night, and the marvellous manner in which the stronger singers will take up and develop the broken songs of weaker birds.
‘If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed
Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne’er have striven