 | Poems |  |
96
ON THE NIGHTINGALE.
'Tis night, and 'twould be silence but for thee,Spirit of multitudinous melody,
Deep nightingale! The very fire of heaven
Seems to thy throbbing strain intensely given,
And all the unsounded passion-fountains deep
That ever heaved the soul, o'erflow and steep
Those burning harmonies, that seem to rock
The weight of darkness on them with keen shock
And gust tempestuous! Mighty, mighty bird,
In thy sweet strength pre-eminent! Hope deferred,
And wounded love! here come for draughts of healing!
Now, nought but those victorious notes are pealing
Throughout the darkly-glorious night! no breath
Of winds is heard. All, all lies hushed as death!
97
Through the deep thickening tumults should resound
That heavenward-mounting strain, that floods the air
With beauty almost too intense to bear,
In its mysterious power and wondrous might
Softening the savage grandeur of the night.
Alas! the rugged real it softeneth not—
Life's disappointments still are unforgot
Even by thy listener's heart! The music-land
Is haunted by a dreamy shadowy band—
The heart's lost hopes and loves, the dead, the dear—
The broken flowers of memory—changed and sere—
Crushed, wrecked affections, bound in withered sheaf,
And all the phantom retinue of grief!
But, O! these bitter truths, why come they now
To wring this long-sealed heart, this long-veiled brow?
Through music's spirit-land glide there no forms
But those bowed down by life's unpitying storms?
98
Rise mantled round with fair transparent light?
Like soft and beautiful exhalations rise,
Nor cease to soar until they reach the skies?
No schooled affections, like earth's fountains, plenished
From the majestic heaven-deeps when evanished?—
Their lovely sources seem in some fierce drought—
No chastened hopes, sublimed by soaring thought?
—These may be there; but hearts of love and pride
Lean to their earthly more than heavenly side—
Would it were not so! Would that any wo
Could alienate this heart from things below!
Would—would the associative links were torn
From the close chain my heart so long hath worn!
Then might I hear thee, wondrous bird, and hang
On thy deep lays, nor feel the maddening pang
Accompanying those rich notes! Oh, why
Must they still call on buried memory?
Why, like electric wands and lightning rods,
But smite grief's deeply-bosomed veiled abodes?
99
Profoundly sorrowing still to sorrowing hearts
Thou seem'st! and well, O well, it may be so,
When thy high song, the loveliest heard below,
Reminds the soul, of all earth's sounds the most,
Of that pure paradise for ever lost,
For ever on this leafy, flowery earth—
Wild scene of conflicts, triumphs, death, and mirth.
What part of time, or of eternity,
Hath sway o'er that most mighty harmony?
The Past, the Present, or the dim To-come?
Art thou an exile from a viewless home?
And is't a rapture of expectancy
That crowns each full victorious melody?
O, how each tone doth pierce through th' answering spirit!
No earthly echoes should that strain inherit—
That thunder-shower of music, thick and deep,
Startling the long-resounding night from sleep,
Which scarce sustains that precious weight of sound,
Disquieting the haunted calm around—
100
Thrilling the moonlighted and flowering woods—
Now, with the sweetnesses of sorrowing tones,
As music sighed from all her thousand thrones
On earth, and through the fair enchanted domes
Of yon starr'd skies, where spirits build their homes!—
Now, with wreathed tortuosities of sound—
Rich harmonies—inextricably wound—
O, do they cleave the heavens or strike the ground?—
Sinking within its depths like lightning strokes
That smite and scathe the immemorial oaks—
The forest-kings, even in their playful scorn?
Or is each tone on viewless pinions borne?
O, whether it disperses or aspires,
That lay, that out-throbs all earth's noblest lyres—
Even lever-like it doth upheave the soul,
While on the sense the volumed concords roll!
—Yet wherefore dost thou pour and rain away
Thy sweet strength on the night? O, let the day—
The golden laughing day—those sounds receive;
With every ray a song of triumph weave;
101
With heaven's own splendours, free from stain or chill;
Let the great sun—the glowing sun above—
Tremble to thy assaults of piercing love!
There, pour away thy passion and thy soul—
There seek thy fiery spirit's fiery goal!
'Mongst the winged clouds that all unshackled shoot,
Though vast as mountains of a century's root!
'Mongst the spring-heads of music and of light—
'Mongst all things glorious, beautiful, and bright!
| Poems | |