The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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      THE NIGHTINGALE

       Table of Contents

      By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

      A CONVERSATIONAL POEM, WRITTEN IN APRIL, 1798.

      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 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 nam’d 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 stretch’d 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 lov’d, 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! On moonlight bushes,

       Whose dewy leafits are but half disclos’d,

       You may perchance behold them on the twigs,

       Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,

       Glistning, while many a glowworm in the shade

       Lights up her love-torch.

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