Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o’er the water,
Shook from his little throat such floods of delicious music,
That the whole air, and the woods, and the waves, seemed silent to listen.
Plaintive at first were the tones and sad, then soaring to madness
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes.
Then single notes were heard, in sorrowful low lamentation,
Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision,
As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops
Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches.”
Here we have a view of our own city, for which we are reasonably grateful to the poet: