Hark! ah, the nightingale-- The tawny-throated! Hark from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark!--what pain! . . . . Again--thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!

'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!

"Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy.

For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light.

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.

Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song.