The little nightingale sits singing aye
On leafy spray,
And in her fitful strain doth run
A thousand and a thousand changes.
With voice that ranges
Through every sweet division
April! it is when thou dost come again,
That love is fain
With gentlest breath the fires to wake,
That cover’d up and slumbering lay,
Through many a day,
When winter’s chill our veins did slake.
Sweet month, thou seest at this jocund prime
Of the spring time,
The hives pour out their lusty young,
And hear’st the yellow bees that ply,
With laden thigh,
Murmuring the flow’ry wilds among.
May shall with pomp his wavy wealth unfold,
His fruits of gold,
His fertilizing dews, that swell
In manna on each spike and stem
And like a gem,
Red honey in the waxen cell.
Who will may praise him, but my voice shall be,
Sweet month for thee;
Thou that to her do’st owe thy name,
Who saw the sea-wave’s foamy tide
Swell and divide,
Whence forth to life and light she came.
ETYMOLOGY.
The following are significations of a few common terms:—
Steward literally means the keeper of the place; it is compounded of the two old words, stede and ward: by the omission of the first d and e the word steward is formed.
Marshal means one who has the care of horses: in the old Teutonic, mare was synonymous with horse, being applied to the kind; scale signified a servant.