Poems and Sonnets :: :: University of Virginia Library

He thought he was a bard of equal power
With others who aforetime twanged the strings,
Around whose brows the unfading bay-wreath clings,
Before whose feet the people incense shower;
Oh, he could sing! as in some summer bower
The nightingale an admiring audience brings,
So feels our young flushed poet as he flings
Aside his sonnets, flower after flower;
But winter came, reaction of his glow,
And took away the fervent pith and marrow
Of the heart that in the heat would overflow,
And he, the second singer trained at Harrow!—
In a looking-glass beheld himself, and lo,
The nightingale was nothing but a sparrow!

131

II

But Beauty came, and smiled, and he was glad,
And well content to sweep a humble harp,
Bringing out at seasons some note strong and sharp,
The echo of some vision he had had,
The nightingale that had been mute and sad
Now burst into a sudden flame of song,
The bird that had been but a sparrow long
Abandoning his garment brown and bad;
For Poesy had said, “my child, the lyre
Gives out a gracious melody in your hands,
Be stalwart, be a singer, do not tire;
I have my nightingales in many lands,
But be an English thrush.” Who understands,
May take this double sonnet for his hire.

132

THE SPARROW AND THE THRUSH.

SECOND VERSION.

I

He thought he was a bard who knew the ways
Of Poesy, and swept the subtle strings,
As when upon a sudden somewhere sings
A nightingale, and all the hearers praise
The sweet bird hidden in the leafy sprays
And hush towards the harmony she brings,
When upward each a hand of waiting flings,
And halting half advanced each foot delays;
He thought he was a poet, he was great
In his own estimation, bone and marrow
Of genius, trained by cunning eye of fate,
The second mighty songster reared at Harrow,
When—in a looking-glass upon a gate
He saw himself perched, and behold, a sparrow!

133

II

Then he despaired—but gentle Beauty came
And laid a cooling palm upon his brow,
And said, ‘my singing bird, be certain now
I had not fanned thy passion to a flame
To bring thee unto poverty and shame,
Nor any who before my footstool bow;
He who would write heroic hymns I trow
Must be himself, as his most lofty aim;’
And then she held a glass before his eyes,
And in it, with a sudden choke and rush
Of feeling as when hopes achievèd flush
Some sufferer, with a shiver of surprise,
Himself again he seemed to recognise,
No nightingale, but a bright-breasted thrush.