Yet come to my bosom, O image adored!
And, sure, thou shalt feel the soft flame of my heart, The glow sympathetic once more be restored,
Once more it shall warm thee, ah, cold as thou art! And to charms so beloved its own feelings impart!
Oh, come! and while others his form may behold,
And he on another with fondness may smile,
To thee shall my wrongs, shall my sorrows be told,
And the kiss I may give thee, these sorrows the while,
Like the memory of joys which are past, shall beguile.
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? O 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! filled 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:
And many a poet echoes the conceit;
Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme
When he had better far have stretched 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
Be loved, like nature!-But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical
Who lose the deep'ning 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 my Friend's 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 full 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 songs-
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 an harmony,
That, should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day.
A most gentle Maid
Who dwelleth in her hospitable home Hard by the Castle, and at latest eve (Even like a lady vowed 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 awakened earth and sky
With one sensation, and those wakeful Birds
Have all burst forth with choral minstrelsy,
As if one quick and sudden Gale had swept
An hundred airy harps! And she hath watched
Many a Nightingale perch giddily
On blosmy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.
Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,
And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear home.-That strain again!
Full fain it would delay me! My dear Babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! And I deem it wise
To make him Nature's playmate.
The evening star: and once when he awoke
In most distressful mood (some inward pain
Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream)
I hurried with him to our orchard plot,
And he beholds the moon, and hnshed at once
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes that swam with undropt tears
Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well-
It is a father's tale. But if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs, that with the night
He may associate Joy! Once more farewell,
Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends! farewell.
SUBLIME was the warning which Liberty spoke,
And grand was the moment when Spaniards awoke
Into life and revenge from the Conqueror's chain!
Oh, Liberty! let not this spirit have rest
Till it move, like a breeze, o'er the waves of the west—
Give the light of your look to each sorrowing spot,
Nor, oh! be the Shamrock of Erin forgot,
While you add to your garland the Olive of Spain!
If the fame of our fathers, bequeath'd with their rights,
Give to country its charm, and to home its delights ;
If deceit be a wound, and suspicion a stain;
Then, ye men of Iberia! our cause is the same
And, oh! may his tomb want a tear and a name,
Who would ask for a nobler, a holier death,
Than to turn his last sigh into Victory's breath
For the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain!
Ye Blakes and O'Donnels, whose fathers resign'd
The green hills of their youth, among strangers to find
That repose which, at home, they had sigh'd for in vain,
Breathe a hope that the magical flame, which you light,
May be felt yet in Erin, as calm and as bright;
And forgive even Albion, while, blushing, she draws,
Like a truant, her sword, in the long-slighted cause
Of the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain!
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