How loudly his sweet voice he

rears!

He loves to talk with marineres That come from a far countree.

He kneels at morn, and noon, and

eve

520

He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.

The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,

Why, this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair,

That signal made but now?'

Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said

'And they answered not our cheer!

The planks look warped! and
see those sails,
How thin they are and sere !
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were

530

penance of

life falls on him.

And ever and

anon through

out his future

life an agony him to travel

constraineth

from land to land,

thee say

What manner of man art thou?'

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been

Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely 't was, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

600

He went like one that hath been stunned,

And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

LOVE

[Publ. 1798]

ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,

And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I Live o'er again that happy hour, When midway on the mount I lay, Beside the ruined tower.

feast,

My own dear Genevieve!

She leant against the arméd man, The statue of the arméd knight; She stood and listened to my lay,

Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve !
She loves me best whene'er I sing

The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story -
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love,

Interpreted my own.

10

20

30

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me that I gazed
Too fondly on her face!

But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once

In green and sunny glade,

There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,

This miserable Knight!

And that unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And

40

50

saved from outrage worse than death

The Lady of the Land.

Her bosom heaved-she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped -
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

'T was partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 't was a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous Bride.

THE NIGHTINGALE

A CONVERSATION POEM, WRITTEN IN APRIL 1798

90

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

6.

A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. And hark! the Nightingale begins its song, · Most musical, most melancholy "bird! A melancholy bird? Oh idle thought! In Nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose hear was pierced

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 sorrow) he, and such as he, 21
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 moon-light, 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 30
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 't will not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deepening 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.

And I know a grove Of large extent, hard by a castle huge, 50 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, 60 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! 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,

Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the

shade

Lights up her love-torch.

70

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 in choral minstrelsy, 80 As if some sudden gale had swept at once A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched

Many a nightingale perch giddily On blossomy 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 homes. That strain again!

90

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 play-mate. He
knows well

The evening-star; and once, when he awoke
In most distressful mood (some inward pain
Had made up that strange thing, an infant's