Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, by CORA RANDALL FABBRI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, by                    
First Line: Hush! I hear the nightingale's pure notes
Last Line: Dirge of life.
Subject(s): Birds; Nightingales


HUSH! I hear the nightingale's pure notes,
Faint and far,
Like a star
That from out the depth of heaven floats.
So from out the foliage, dense and green,
Floats the music of the nightingale;
In a rapture of delight
For the gloaming dim and white,
In a rhapsody of love for chaste Dian, pure and
pale.

Ev'ry flower 'neath the moon's mild dart
Lifteth up
Pearl-dewed cup
To receive the song into her heart;
And the breeze hath caught it in his arms,
Flinging it and floating it afar.
O thou wondrous nightingale!
Am'rous of the moonlight pale,
Hast thou learnt thy song divine from the music
of the star?

What sweet theme, Bird, moveth thee to sing?
Star or flower?
Moonlit hour?
Joy or grief? or beauty of the Spring?
Did thy song have birth in floods of love?
Art thou love-embodied? All the earth
Ringeth with thy clear refrain,
Floating like a mystic rain,
Upward to the star's unrest, downward to the
flower's birth.

Hearing, I forget that Life is pain,
That the morrow
Brings forth sorrow,
And that dear, dead buds bloom not again.
Oh, to lie, as now, forevermore,
With this music swelling out so sweet!
But all things must cease to be,
And thy tender rhapsody
Melteth with the drooping star, as all joys are,
incomplete.

Certes, Bird, thy song has source elsewhere.
Here, alas,
Pleasures pass
Fleet of foot, and joys, heart-grievings bear.
Friends grow cold, and even Love forgets;
Flowers fade, and Spring dies very soon;
Beauty passeth in a breath,
And Life yields itself to Death,
And the wonder of thy voice fadeth with the
fading moon.

Memory of joy's sweet ecstasy,
Love's first kiss,
Love's best bliss,
Were not worthy of thy melody.
Doth thy song express some hidden dream,
Deep, too deep for words, within man's heart?
Some vague longing, some unrest,
Some sweet vision unexpressed
Of a world where Summer lives and dear friends
must never part.

Bird, thy song into my spirit creeps!
What were Night,
Stars and Light,
Lacking music that from thee outleaps?
Dulcet notes that overflow the world,
Piercing clouds and darkness like a knife,
In a mellow-flooding breath
That is worth all Life and Death ...
And so Love's sweet song o'erflows all the solemn
dirge of Life.





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