For kindness which the heart doth teach,

Disdaineth all peculiar speech.

'Tis common to the bird and brute,
To fallen man, to angel bright,
And sweeter 'tis than lonely lute
Heard in the air at night-
Divine and universal tongue,
Whither by bird or spirit sung!

But hark! is that a sound we hear

Come chirping from its throat: Faint-short-but weak, and very

And like a little grateful note? Another? ha! look where it lies: It shivers-gasps-is still-it dies!

clear,

"Tis dead-'tis dead! and all our care
Is useless. Now, in vain

The mother's woe doth pierce the air,
Calling her nestling bird again!
All's vain the singer's heart is cold,
Its eye is dim-its fate is told!

No cloud, no relique 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.

But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrow,) he, and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain,
And

many a poet echoes the conceit ;

Poet who hath been building up the rhyme, When he had better far have stretch'd his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moonlight, to the influxes

Of shapes and sounds, and shifting elements,
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in Nature's immortality,

A venerable thing! and so his song
Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself

Beloved like Nature! But 't will not be so ;
And youths and maidens, most poetical,
Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still,
Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

My friend, and thou, our sister! we have learnt A different lore: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! '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 love-chant, and disburthen his fell soul Of all its music!

And 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 moonlight 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,

Glittering, 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 vow'd 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 awaken'd earth and sky
With one sensation, and these wakeful birds