O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hopes the lover’s heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes, that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo’s bill,
Portend success in love. Oh, if Jove’s will
Have linked...
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From “Music’s Duel”
NOW westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon’s high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat
A sweet lute’s-master, in whose gentle airs
He lost the day’s heat and his own hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A... -
Hark! ah, the nightingale!
The tawny-throated!
Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark,—what pain!
O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still,—after many years, in distant lands,—
Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain
That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, Old-world pain,—
Say, will it never heal?
... -
From “The Task,” Book I.
TEN thousand warblers cheer the day, and one
The livelong night: nor these alone, whose notes
Nice-fingered Art must emulate in vain,
But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still repeated circles, screaming loud,
The jay, the pie, and ev’n the boding owl,
That hails the rising moon, have charms for men.... -
Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers.
Chee, chee, chee.Robert of...
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A Flock of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove:
Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love:
There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winter seeble, Conquedle,—
A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle—
Crying, “Phew, shew, Wadolincon, see, see, Bobolincon,
Down among the tickletops, hiding in the buttercups!
I know... -
I.
oh, thou northland bobolink,
Looking over Summer’s brink
Up to Winter, worn and dim,
Peering down from mountain rim,
Something takes me in thy note,
Quivering wing, and bubbling throat;
Something moves me in thy ways—
Bird, rejoicing in thy days,
In thy upward-hovering flight.
In thy suit of black and white,... -
When Nature had made all her birds,
With no more cares to think on,
She gave a rippling laugh, and out
There flew a Bobolinkon.She laughed again; out flew a mate;
A breeze of Eden bore them
Across the fields of Paradise,
The sunrise reddening o’er them.Incarnate sport and holiday,
They flew and sang forever... -
He did n’t know much music
When first he come along;
An’ all the birds went wonderin’
Why he did n’t sing a song.They primped their feathers in the sun,
An’ sung their sweetest notes;
An’ music jest come on the run
From all their purty throats!But still that bird was silent
In summer time an’ fall;
... -
O Blackbird! sing me something well:
While all the neighbors shoot thee round,
I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground,
Where thou may’st warble, eat, and dwell.The espaliers and the standards all
Are thine; the range of lawn and park:
The unnetted black-hearts ripen dark;
All thine, against the garden wall.Yet, tho’...