Ode to a Nightingale

1503

But I, who, daily craving,

Cannot have to content me,

Have more cause to lament me,

Since wanting is more woe than too much having.

O Philomela fair, O take some gladness
That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness!
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;

Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.
Philip Sidney [1554-1586]

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stainèd mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret,

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Song

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

1505

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:-Do I wake or sleep?

SONG

John Keats [1795-1821]

'Tis sweet to hear the merry lark,

That bids a blithe good-morrow;

But sweeter to hark, in the twinkling dark,
To the soothing song of sorrow.

Oh nightingale! What doth she ail?

And is she sad or jolly?

For ne'er on earth was sound of mirth
So like to melancholy.

The merry lark, he soars on high,

No worldly thought o'ertakes him;
He sings aloud to the clear blue sky,
And the daylight that awakes him.
As sweet a lay, as loud, as gay,
The nightingale is trilling;
With feeling bliss, no less than his,
Her little heart is thrilling.

Yet ever and anon, a sigh

Peers through her lavish mirth;
For the lark's bold song is of the sky,
And hers is of the earth.

By night and day, she tunes her lay,
To drive away all sorrow;

For bliss, alas! to-night must pass,

And woe may come to-morrow.

Hartley Coleridge [1796-1840]

BIRD SONG

THE robin sings of willow-buds,
Of snowflakes on the green;
The bluebird sings of Mayflowers,
The crackling leaves between;
The veery has a thousand tales
To tell to girl and boy;
But the oriole, the oriole,
Sings, "Joy! joy! joy!"

The pewee calls his little mate,
Sweet Phoebe, gone astray,

The warbler sings, "What fun, what fun,

To tilt upon the spray!"

The cuckoo has no song, but clucks,

Like any wooden toy;

But the oriole, the oriole,
Sings, "Joy! jcy! joy!"

The grosbeak sings the rose's birth,
And paints her on his breast;
The sparrow sings of speckled eggs,

Soft brooded in the nest.

The wood-thrush sings of peace, "Sweet peace,

Sweet peace," without alloy;

But the oriole, the oriole,

Sings "Joy! joy! joy!"

Laura E. Richards [1850

The Song the Oriole Sings

1507

THE SONG THE ORIOLE SINGS

THERE is a bird that comes and sings

In a professor's garden-trees; Upon the English oak he swings,

And tilts and tosses in the breeze.

I know his name, I know his note,
That so with rapture takes my soul;
Like flame the gold beneath his throat,
His glossy cope is black as coal.

O oriole, it is the song

You sang me from the cottonwood, Too young to feel that I was young, Too glad to guess if life were good.

And while I hark, before my door,
Adown the dusty Concord Road,
The blue Miami flows once more

As by the cottonwood it flowed.

And on the bank that rises steep,

And pours a thousand tiny rills,
From death and absence laugh and leap
My school-mates to their flutter-mills.

The blackbirds jangle in the tops
Of hoary-antlered sycamores;
The timorous killdee starts and stops
Among the drift-wood on the shores.

Below, the bridge-a noonday fear

Of dust and shadow shot with sunStretches its gloom from pier to pier, Far unto alien coasts unknown.

And on these alien coasts, above,

Where silver ripples break the stream's Long blue, from some roof-sheltering grove A hidden parrot scolds and screams.