O Nightingale! Thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart:--
These notes of thine--they pierce and pierce;
Tumultuous harmony and fierce!
Thou sing'st as if the God of wine
Had helped thee to a Valentine;
A song in mockery and despite
Of shades, and dews, and silent Night;
And steady bliss, and all the loves
Now sleeping in their peaceful groves.
I heard a Stock-dove sing or say
His homely tale, this very day;
His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come at by the breeze:
He did not cease; but cooed--and cooed,
And somewhat pensively he wooed.
He sang of love with quiet blending,
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith and inward glee;
That was the Song--the Song for me!
"_His voice was buried among trees_," says Wordsworth; "a metaphor
expressing the love of _seclusion_ by which this bird is marked; and
characterizing its note as not partaking of the shrill and the
piercing, and therefore more easily deadened by the intervening shade;
yet a note so peculiar, and withal so pleasing, that the breeze,
gifted with that love of the sound which the poet feels, penetrates
the shade in which it is entombed, and conveys it to the ear of the
listener.
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