***

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; the remainder (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]

A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;—­ 5
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness—­as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, 10
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale 15

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness

Of the circumfluous waters,—­every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, 20
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave

Which is its cradle—­ever from below 25
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are, 30

Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish!—­and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone, 35
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.

...

And so this man returned with axe and saw 40
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature’s gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene 45

With jagged leaves,—­and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep—­or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops

Into their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature’s pure tears which have no bitterness;—­ 50
Around the cradles of the birds aloft