YES, Nightingale, I lie awake And wondering hear thee sing Over the deep world from thy brake While every other thing Sleepeth -- the deep world like a lake Stirred round thee, ring on ring! More than the chanters of the light Thy passion men confounds Because like ours 'tis born in sight Of that which hath no bounds: How the dark-streaming infinite Wells in those golden sounds! Some traveller once in Himalay Chanced on a tribe so lone, So dungeoned from the world away, They deemed it all their own, And any human race but they Incredible, unknown. But up, up where the snowy crest Of Elburz mounts the blue And Caucasus sinks east and west Precipitous, some few Clansmen are found, high on its breast Where half the earth's in view; And these by that great prospect thrilled Perhaps, in joy or fear, Poor hunters wild and rudely skilled, Have raised an altar there @3"To the God Unknown"@1; and this they build Of horns of goat and deer. Like thine their dark and lofty song Where shining gulfs expand Beyond the Caspian -- Death, Time, Wrong That few can understand -- Is launched, and low and clear and strong Floats out to all the land! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...STREET WINDOW by CARL SANDBURG ON AN INTAGLIO HEAD OF MINERVA (1) by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH EPISTLE TO JOHN LAPRAIK, AN OLD SCOTTISH BARD by ROBERT BURNS ROUEN; 26 APRIL - 25 MAY 1915 by MAY WEDDERBURN CANNAN FOOLIN' WID DE SEASONS by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR GERONTION by THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT SONNET ON FAME (2) by JOHN KEATS |