For any living thing, hath faculties

Which he has never used; that thought with him Is in its infancy. The man, whose eye

Is ever on himself, doth look on one,

The least of nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds

Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love,
True dignity abides with him alone

Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.

THE NIGHTINGALE;

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

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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 1;
And many a poet echoes the conceit,

"Most musical, most melancboly." This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy Man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The Author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that of having ridiculed his Bible.

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