For kindness which the heart doth teach, Disdaineth all peculiar speech. 'Tis common to the bird and brute, 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 The mother's woe doth pierce the air, No cloud, no relique of the sunken day Yet let us think upon the vernal showers A melancholy bird? Oh, idle thought! But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, (And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale 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, A venerable thing! and so his song Beloved like Nature! But 't will not be so ; 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, They answer, and provoke each other's song, 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, (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, |