A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from the Best Poets

Everything did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Leaned her breast up-till a thorn;
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry;
Teru, teru, by and by;
That, to hear her so complain,
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs, so lively shown,
Made me think upon mine own.

Ah! (thought I) thou mourn'st in vain ; None takes pity on thy pain;

Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee;
Ruthless bears, they will not cheer thee;
King Pandion, he is dead;

All thy friends are lapped in lead :
All thy fellow-birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing!

Whilst as fickle Fortune smiled,
Thou and I were both beguiled,
Every one that flatters thee

Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy, like the wind;

Faithful friends are hard to find.

Every man will be thy friend

Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend ;

But, if stores of crowns be scant,

No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him call;
And, with such-like flattering,
Pity but he were a king."
If he be addict to vice,
Quickly him they will entice;
But if Fortune once do frown,
Then farewell his great renown:
They that fawned on him before,
Use his company no more.
He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need;
If thou sorrow,
he will weep,
If thou wake, he cannot sleep.
Thus, of every grief in heart,
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.

RICHARD BARNFIELD.

Thee wondrous we may call,

Most wondrous this of all,
That such a tiny throat

Should wake so loud a sound, and pour so loud

a note.

MARIA TESSelschade VISSCHER (Dutch). Translation of JOHN BOWRING.

PHILOMELA.

HARK! ah, the nightingale !

The tawny-throated!

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! hark, what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,

Still

after many years, in distant lands

Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain

That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, Old-World

pain, —

Say, will it never heal?

And can this fragrant lawn,
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy racked heart and brain
Afford no balm ?

Dost thou to-night behold,

Here, through the moonlight on this English

grass,

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?

Dost thou again peruse,

With hot cheeks and seared eyes,

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame?

Dost thou once more essay

Thy flight; and feel come over thee,
Poor fugitive! the feathery change;

Once more; and once more make resound,
With love and hate, triumph and agony,
Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale?

Listen, Eugenia,

How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves !

Again thou hearest !

Eternal passion!

Eternal pain!

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

ADDRESS TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

As it fell upon a day,

In the merry month of May,

Sitting in a pleasant shade

Which a grove of myrtles made,

Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,

Trees did grow, and plants did spring;

THE MOTHER NIGHTINGALE.

I HAVE seen a nightingale

On a sprig of thyme bewail, Seeing the dear nest, which was Hers alone, borne off, alas!

By a laborer; I heard,

For this outrage, the poor bird
Say a thousand mournful things
To the wind, which, on its wings,
To the Guardian of the sky
Bore her melancholy cry,
Bore her tender tears. She spake
As if her fond heart would break:
One while in a sad, sweet note,
Gurgled from her straining throat,
She enforced her piteous tale,
Mournful prayer and plaintive wail;
One while, with the shrill dispute
Quite outwearied, she was mute;
Then afresh, for her dear brood,
Her harmonious shrieks renewed.
Now she winged it round and round;
Now she skimmed along the ground;
Now from bough to bough, in haste,
The delighted robber chased,
And, alighting in his path,

Seemed to say, 'twixt grief and wrath,
"Give me back, fierce rustic rude,
Give me back my pretty brood,"
And I heard the rustic still
Answer, "That I never will."

His nimble hand's instinct then taught each

string

A capering cheerfulness, and made them sing
To their own dance; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and with a long-drawn dash
Blends all together; then distinctly trips
From this to that, then quick returning skips,
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, everywhere
Meets art with art; sometimes, as if in doubt
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear, unwrinkled song; then doth she point it
With tender accents, and severely joint it
By short diminutives, that being reared
In controverting warbles, evenly shared,
With her sweet self she wrangles: he, amazed
That from so small a channel should be raised
The torrent of a voice whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet, that, tickled with rare art,
The tattling strings, each breathing in his part,
Most kindly do fall out: the grumbling bass
In surly groans disdains the treble's grace;

ESTEVAN MANUEL DE VILLEGAS (Spanish). The high-percht treble chirps at this, and chides,

Translation of THOMAS ROSCOE.

MUSIC'S DUEL.

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat
A sweet lute's-master, in whose gentle airs
He lost the day's heat and his own hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighboring wood
(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their muse, their siren, harmless siren she):
There stood she listening, and did entertain
The music's soft report, and mould the same
In her own murmurs; that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good.
The man perceived his rival, and her art;
Disposed to give the light-foot lady sport,
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informs it in a sweet præludium

Of closer strains, and e'er the war begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string

Until his finger (moderator) hides

And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all,
Hoarse, shrill, at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to the harvest of death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands; this lesson too
She gives them back; her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs; and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short thick sobs, whose thundering volleys float,
And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, stilled out of her breast ;
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripened airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops ploughed by her breath
Which there reciprocally laboreth.

In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Sounded to the name of great Apollo's lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Ofsweet-lipped angel-imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon, and then

Charged with a flying touch; and straightway she Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,

Carves out her dainty voice as readily
Into a thousand sweet distinguished tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions

Quick volumes of wild notes, to let him know,
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.

To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing
(Most divine service), whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice

In the close murmur of a sparkling noise;
And lay the groundwork of her hopeful song,
Still keeping in the forward stream so long,
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Winged with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the waved back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train;
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note;
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird;
Her little soul is ravished, and so poured
Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed
Above herself, music's enthusiast.

Shame now and anger mixed a double stain
In the musician's face: "Yet, once again,
Mistress, I come: now reach a strain, my lute,
Above her mock, or be forever mute.
Or tune a song of victory to me,

Or to thyself sing thine own obsequy."
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings,
And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings.
The sweet-lipped sisters musically frighted,
Singing their fears are fearfully delighted;
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs
Are fanned and frizzled in the wanton airs
Of his own breath, which, married to his lyre,
Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self
look higher;

From this to that, from that to this he flies,
Feels music's pulse in all her arteries;
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,
His fingers struggle with the vocal threads,
Following those little rills, he sinks into
A sea of Helicon; his hand does go
Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup.
The humorous strings expound his learned touch,
By various glosses; now they seem to grutch
And murmur in a buzzing din, then jingle
In shrill-toned accents striving to be single;
Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke
Gives life to some new grace; thus doth he invoke
Sweetness by all her names; thus, bravely thus
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious)
The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heaved on the surges of swoll'n rhapsodies;
Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curl the air
With flash of high-born fancies, here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone,

Whose trembling murmurs, melting in wild airs
Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares;
Because those precious mysteries that dwell
In music's ravished soul he dare not tell,
But whisper to the world; thus do they vary,
Each string his note, as if they meant to carry
Their master's blest soul (snatched out at his ears
By a strong ecstasy) through all the spheres
Of music's heaven; and seat it there on high,
In the empyrean of pure harmony.
At length (after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still breathing the best life
Of blest variety, attending on
His fingers' fairest evolution,

In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall)
A full-mouthed diapason swallows all.

This done, he lists what she would say to this i
And she, although her breath's late exercise
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat,
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note.
Alas! in vain! for while (sweet soul) she tries
To measure all those wild diversities
Of chattering strings, by the small size of one
Poor simple voice, raised in a natural tone;
She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies :
She dies, and leaves her life the victor's prize,
Falling upon his lute: O, fit to have
(That lived so sweetly), dead, so sweet a grave!

BIRDS.

RICHARD CRASHAW.

66
FROM THE PELICAN ISLAND."

- BIRDS, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean, Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace; In plumage, delicate and beautiful,

Thick without burden, close as fishes' scales,
Or loose as full-blown poppies to the breeze;
With wings that might have had a soul within

them,

They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment, Birds, small and great, of endless shapes and colors,

Here flew and perched, there swam and dived a pleasure;

Watchful and agile, uttering voices wild
And harsh, yet in accordance with the waves
Upon the beach, the winds in caverns moaning,
Or winds and waves abroad upon the water.
Some sought their food among the finny shoals,
Swift darting from the clouds, emerging soon
With slender captives glittering in their beaks;
These in recesses of steep crags constructed
Their eyries inaccessible, and trained
Their hardy broods to forage in all weathers:
Others, more gorgeously apparelled, dwelt
Among the woods, on nature's dainties feeding,

Herbs, seeds, and roots; or, ever on the wing,
Pursuing insects through the boundless air:
In hollow trees or thickets these concealed
Their exquisitely woven nests; where lay
Their callow offspring, quiet as the down
On their own breasts, till from her search the dam
With laden bill returned, and shared the meal
Among her clamorous suppliants, all agape ;
Then, cowering o'er them with expanded wings,
She felt how sweet it is to be a mother.
Of these, a few, with melody untaught,
Turned all the air to music within hearing,
Themselves unseen; while bolder quiristers
On loftiest branches strained their clarion-pipes,
And made the forest echo to their screams
Discordant, — yet there was no discord there,
But tempered harmony; all tones combining,
In the rich confluence of ten thousand tongues,
To tell of joy and to inspire it. Who

Love found that lonely couple on their isle, And soon surrounded them with blithe compan

ions.

The noble birds, with skill spontaneous, framed
A nest of reeds among the giant-grass,

| That waved in lights and shadows o'er the soil.
There, in sweet thraldom, yet unweening why,
The patient dam, who ne'er till now had known
Parental instinct, brooded o'er her eggs,
Long ere she found the curious secret out,
That life was hatching in their brittle shells.

Could hear such concert, and not join in chorus? Then, from a wild rapacious bird of prey,
Not I.

JAMES MONTGOMERY,

THE PELICAN.

FROM THE PELICAN ISLAND."

AT early dawn I marked them in the sky,
Catching the morning colors on their plumes;
Not in voluptuous pastime revelling there,
Among the rosy clouds, while orient heaven
Flamed like the opening gates of Paradise,
Whence issued forth the angel of the sun,
And gladdened nature with returning day :
Eager for food, their searching eyes they fixed
On ocean's unrolled volume, from an height
That brought immensity within their scope;
Yet with such power of vision looked they down,
As though they watched the shell-fish slowly
gliding

O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral.
On indefatigable wing upheld,

Tamed by the kindly process, she became
That gentlest of all living things, - a mother;
Gentlest while yearning o'er her naked young,
Fiercest when stirred by anger to defend them.
Her mate himself the softening power confessed,
Forgot his sloth, restrained his appetite,
And ranged the sky and fished the stream for her.
Or, when o'erwearied Nature forced her off
To shake her torpid feathers in the breeze,
And bathe her bosom in the cooling flood,
He took her place, and felt through every nerve,
While the plump nestlings throbbed against his
heart,

The tenderness that makes the vulture mild;
Yea, half unwillingly his post resigned,
When, homesick with the absence of an hour,
She hurried back, and drove him from her seat
With pecking bill and cry of fond distress,
Answered by him with murmurs of delight,
Whose gutturals harsh to her were love's own
music.

Then, settling down, like foam upon the wave,

Breath, pulse, existence, seemed suspended in White, flickering, effervescent, soon subsiding,

them :

They were as pictures painted on the sky;

Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,

Her ruffled pinions smoothly she composed;
And, while beneath the comfort of her wings,
Her crowded progeny quite filled the nest,

Like meteors changed from stars to gleams of The halcyon sleeps not sounder, when the wind

lightning,

And struck upon the deep, where, in wild play,
Their quarry floundered, unsuspecting harm;
With terrible voracity, they plunged
Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat
A tempest on the surges with their wings,
Till flashing clouds of foam and spray concealed
them.

Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
Alive and wriggling in the elastic net,

Is breathless, and the sea without a curl,
Nor dreams the halcyon of serener days,
Or nights more beautiful with silent stars,
Than, in that hour, the mother pelican,
When the warm tumults of affection sunk
Into calm sleep, and dreams of what they were,
Dreams more delicious than reality.

-He sentinel beside her stood, and watched
With jealous eye the raven in the clouds,
And the rank sea-mews wheeling round the cliffs.

Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks, Woe to the reptile then that ventured nigh

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