O Reader! had you in your mind O gentle Reader! you would find What more I have to say is short, I hope you'll kindly take it : It is no tale; but should you think, Perhaps a tale you'll make it. One summer-day I chanced to see A stump of rotten wood. The mattock totter'd in his hand; So vain was his endeavour That at the root of the old tree He might have worked for ever. "You're overtasked, good Simon Lee, And at the word right gladly he I struck, and with a single blow At which the poor Old Man so long The tears into his eyes were brought, So fast out of his heart, I thought They never would have done. -I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning. Alas! the gratitude of men Has oftner left me mourning. The NIGHTINGALE. Written in April, 1798. No cloud, no relique of the sunken day. A balmy night! and tho' 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? O idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. -But some night-wandering Man, whose heart was pierc'd 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 sorrows) he and such as he First named these notes a melancholy strain: Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme "Most musical, most melancholy." This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy Man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The Author makes thisremark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that of having ridiculed his Bible. When he had better far have stretched his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell By sun or moon-light, to the influxes Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs My Friend, and my Friend's Sister! we have learnt And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale |