THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. | Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain "COME forth!" my catbird calls to me, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Seem sunshine-dappled with his sing- "Come out beneath the unmastered sky, Without premeditated graces. A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking. "Come out!' with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you! And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, Still hiding farther onward, wooes you." "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Has 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 Fed with the sap of old romances. "I ask no ampler skies than those And does not Doña Clara love me? "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, "O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The moorish cymbal tinkles faintly! "O life borne lightly in the hand, Not tramped to mud yet by the mil- "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, IN THE TWILIGHT. MEN say the sullen instrument, Whispers the ravished strings Old summers in its memory glow; And bubbling o'er with mingled fan- The magical moonlight then cies, Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen Came dim from the distance blown; With delight as it stood, O my life, have we not had seasons When Nature and we were peers, Have we not from the earth drawn Too fine for earth's sordid uses? All I feel, all I know? Sometimes a breath floats by me, An odor from Dreamland sent, Of memories that stay not and go not, That cannot forget or reclaim it, To make it a show, THE FOOT-PATH. Ir mounts athwart the windy hill Through sallow slopes of upland bare, And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still Its narrowing curves that end in air. By day, a warmer-hearted blue Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clew To gracious climes where all is well. By night, far yonder, I surmise An ampler world than clips my ken, I look and long, then haste me home, From former good, old overmuch; The bird I list hath never come Within the scope of mortal ear; Behind the hill, behind the sky, The song itself must lend the wings. Sing on, sweet bird, close hid, and raise A something too vague, could I That climb from these low-vaulted days name it, For others to know, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, This pleasure more sharp than pain, In the ages glad, Long ago! To spacious sunshines far from pain. |