THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE. A WOODMAN whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good) Hated to hear, under the stars or moon One nightingale in an interfluous wood Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, In this sweet forest, from the golden close Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail, Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss Of the circumfluous waters,-every sphere And every beast stretched in its rugged cave, Which is its cradle-ever from below Of one serene and unapproached star, Itself how low, how high beyond all height Was awed into delight, and by the charm Girt as with an interminable zone, Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion And so this man returned with axe and saw Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green With jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, They spread themselves into the loveliness Of fan-like leaves, and over palid flowers Hang like moist clouds:-or, where high branches kiss, Make a green space among the silent bowers, Like a vast fane in a metropolis, Surrounded by the columns and the towers All overwrought with branch-like traceries Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute, Wakening the leaves and waves ere it has past To such brief unison as on the brain One tone, which never can recur, has cast, One accent never to return again. TO THE MOON. ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? SONG FOR TASSO. I LOVED-alas! our life is love; But when we cease to breathe and move I do suppose love ceases too. I thought, but not as now I do, Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, And still I love and still I think, And if I think, my thoughts come fast, I mix the present with the past, And each seems uglier than the last. Till by the grated casement's ledge |