THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. OME forth!" my catbird calls to me "COME "And hear me sing a cavatina That, in this old familiar tree, Shall hang a garden of Alcina. "These buttercups shall brim with wine Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic; May not New England be divine? My ode to ripening summer classic? "Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. "Come out beneath the unmastered sky,, With its emancipating spaces, And learn to sing as well as I, · Without premeditated graces. "What boot your many-volumed gains, "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies "Come out! with me the oriole cries, "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Hast poured from that syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket, "A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul hast caught With morn and evening voluntaries, "Deem me not faithless, if all day "A bird is singing in my brain And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances. "I ask no ampler skies than those "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, Then silence deep with breathless stars, "O music of all moods and climes, "O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million! "Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. "Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, And still, God knows, in purgatory, Give its best sweetness to all song, To Nature's self her better glory." IN THE TWILIGHT. EN say the sullen instrument, ME That, from the Master's bow, With pangs of joy or woe, Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, Whispers the ravished strings More than he knew or meant; Old summers in its memory glow; The secrets of the wind it sings; All it dreamed when it stood In the murmurous pine-wood Long ago! The magical moonlight then Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen Came dim from the distance blown ; |