Ode to the Nightingales (Part II)

Why are ye gone?

Ye Minstrels of the merry May!
Ye tuneful Minstrels of the wand'ring lay!
Why have ye taken your sweet selves away?
Why are ye gone,
Leaving me here alone
Through songless and through silent woods to stray?

What have I done
That ye should seek to right your fancied wrong,
By such denial of your gentle song
To one whose purest heart's delight
Hath been in the familiar cheer
Ye brought his woodlands, year by year?
To one who would not even now requite
You slight for slight,
But rather with his song repay —
(Poor though it be
Beside your minstrelsy),
Past years of comfort, when ye loved to stay
Close by his side, and round his home,
Like blessed airs from heaven to come.
Ye sorrow-soothing Voices of the Night!
Ye choral Chimera of the Festal Day!

Never!— my heart can truthfully profess —
Through all the years of boyish thoughtlessness,
Never could mem'ry, searching, find
One ill done to your gentle kind;
Not even to the humblest of the throng
"Which make up that great family of song
That haunt our gardens and that fill our groves
With their glad voices and perpetual loves.
No stone
Heartlessly thrown,
Simply to claim
The merit of a deadly aim;
No wanton shout,
To start the hidden warbler out
From the deep covert of his noon-tide shade;
No inquisition rudely made,
Where ling'ring curiosity,
Affecting the philosopher, would pry
Into the sacredness and secresy
Of homes, to which our own home-love should be
Safe-guard more sure than door or lock or key.
No rifled cradle— trusted safe to hold
Treasure more precious than uncounted gold —
Whose spoils, by the bewailing mother miss'd,
Grace now the drawer of some cold naturalist;
Who took the little living womb,
Full of the rip'ning fruits of love,
And made of it an empty tomb
His classifying schemes to prove,
A tomb on which, in Love's behalf,
Truth might engrave this epitaph, —
"In memory of reckless ruin spread,
Of the unborn, and the unburied dead."
No captive in his gilded cage,
Whose wing and song might both be free,
Ever, in youth's most thoughtless age,
Lost his green woodland joys for me.
No mem'ry of such wicked wrong
Done to the humblest child of song
That ever chirp'd beneath our household eaves,
Its self-accusing shadow leaves
Across the sunshine of my thankful heart:
O! would that I had done as well my part
To God, and all my fellow-men!
I should not then know half the bitter smart
Which rankles in my wounded conscience, when
I think of all that Love hath done for me,
And my unloving infidelity.

Nor yet in later years,
When thoughtful selfishness
Upon the bough of Selfish thoughtlessness,
As its expected, natural fruit, appears;
And a cold calculating care
To pamper poor humanity
Grasps all it can, and grudges any share
To others of the gifts that round us lie,
When all to take
And nothing give
In our communion with our kind,
For our own sake
We only live,
Nor others' wants or interests mind;
Careful alone about our own gourd-bower,
And careless how with others it may be,
Expecting fruit, where we had pluck'd the flow'r,
And ever on the self-same tree;
Just as it may our impulse suit,
List'ning for song, and seeking fruit,
Unmindful how the one must soon be mute
Or lose its tender melody,
If we exclusively require
What of the other Nature yields
To cheer, with luscious draughts, the feather'd choir
Of all her hills and vales and woods and fields; —
Not even then did my mere likings prove
Too strong a passion for my purer love.

And true to such intent, my garden lends
Freely its comforts to my feather'd friends.
Its shade, its quiet, all its flow'ry bloom,
Its breezy freshness, and its soft perfume,
These we in common share:
But other sweets,
Hidden within their leafy, cool retreats,
Rip'ning and redd'ning day by day,
Beneath the sun's reflected ray,
Their earlier quest,
And haply their deserving such things best
Give them more plenteously beyond compare -y
For they, as owners all in fee,
Not as a gift, but as their right,
Take cherry, plum, and strawberry,
And currant red and black and white;
Leaving in kind the parson's tithe,
As good, religious birds should do,
Throwing in ditties bright and blithe,
As something for the gardener too;
But leaving little else behind for me,
Save what of song and plumage hangs on every tree
And yet, ye blessed birds! within my grounds
Ye know what careless freedom yours has been;
No scaring sights— no sudden startling sounds,
To drive you from your coverts cool and green.
No bird-lime laid, no ambush set
With cruel gun, or crafty net,
No artful policy to please
The gardener, and preserve my pease,
Ever one moment made me prove untrue
In deed, or word, or even thought to you.
How oft, with eye averted, past the nest
Which held her callow young have I gone by,
Lest a too curious freedom should molest
The brooding mother in her privacy;
Or haply, if she chose some fav'rite walk,
How have I left it lest my presence scare;
Or, with light step, and gentle whisp'ring talk
Have used it, when some need compell'd me there.
Thus all my days,
Familiar with your ways
And you with mine,
Sweetly have we lived together
In sunny and in shady weather,
Nor each against the other could repine:
United by one living chain of love,
The highest link of which hangs on above.

Then wherefore are ye gone,
Ye rulers in the realm of song!
Ye, ye alone
Of all the feather 'd throng,
Why have ye such unkindness to me done?

Why hold not still your royal court
Within the golden shadow of my groves?
Why come not here to make your pleasant sport,
And consecrate and sing your happy loves?
Ask all your orchestra if one there be
Can lay a charge of grievance against me.

Let the dear Redbreast, that in winter comes
To get his morning meal of crumbs,
Say, if the kindliest soul on earth
His need provide not for before her own,
If gentler hands, or heart of purer worth
Were ever in this world of worthies known
Than those which for him care, and which his crumbs have strewn.
The Cuckoo, with his flute-like call;

The piping Goldfinch in his tree;
The Lark, that far above them all
Sings from his lightsome privacy;
The Thrush, that from his mellow throat
So much of your own song doth pour,
That some, unskill'd, mistake the note,
Or think you sing from the same score;
The Linnet, with his quiv'ring wings,
Telling out all his heart believes;
The Swallow, with his twitterings
Low in the ivy-cluster'd eaves;
The wood's sweet swain, the Turtle-dove,
That with his soft perpetual coo,
(The refrain of his quiet love,)

Still turns the woo'd and won to woo;
The Blackbird, with his yellow bill,
His tawny legs, and velvet coat,
His sometimes melting, sometimes shrill,
But always most melodious note;
The Rail, that in the dewy grass
Nightly doth his " plain song" repeat;
The cawing Rooks, that homeward pass,
Each to his old ancestral seat:

The Ouzel, from his solitudes
Watching his new-found mate's employ,
And telling all the peopled woods
The secrets of his love and joy;
The Sparrow, with his pilf'ring ways,
Upon the house-ridge, that from thence,
But for what Holy Scripture says,
You'd drive for his impertinence; —
All these, that take the lower parts
In the great chorus of your song,
Ask them, and from their little hearts
They'll say I never did them wrong.

Alas! I fear
Some other cause,
Than breaking of the laws
Which bind
Me to the creatures of your gentle kind,
Hath thus deprived me of the spring-tide cheer
For which I've watch'd and waited all the ling'ring year.

Beside the streams —
The little rills that flow
Down from the well-spring of Eternal Love, —
I have contented me to rest below,
Fill'd with the dreams
Which, fancy-fed and fashion'd, come and go,
Delighting but distracting mortals so,
That they for them that Home forget,
On which their best affections should be set;
Nor seek, as they should do, " those things which are above:"
So pleasant is the music of the stream,
With its soft bubbling murmur, ever flowing;
So brilliant is the colouring of the dream
In the rich hues of Hope and Mem'ry glowing!
And He, whose tender love
And gentle dealing
With all His children in this world of care,
(The purpose of His discipline revealing,)
Lighten its darkness, and its burden share;
Who, from above,
Watching each phase of feeling,
Meets every need within them everywhere,
And to their inmost souls can reach,
(If they attentive bend the ear,)
With subtiler intelligence than speech,
Words which, though voiceless, still the heart can hear;
He, who, with bloom or fragrance of a flow'r,
With song, or flutt'ring pinion of a bird,
Grey morning mist, or gleaming sun-set show'r,
Rustling of leaves by faintest zephyr Stirr'd,
(Things which the world,
In all its giddy madness whirl'd
Far from its better self, and truest gain,
Deems but as trifles valueless and vain,)
He, who with these can touch the spring
Whence all our fond affections rise,
And the long-buried years can bring
Back with their living memories,
Until the eye,
Answ'ring the gentle summons of a sigh,
Lightens with joy
Which life-long troubles never could destroy;
Or fills with tears
That, more than half a century ago,
At the same sight or sound began to flow;
He, ever teaching, ever near,
And Giver of all good, whate'er
He gives or in His wisdom takes away,
Seeing me wrapt too much in earth's delight,
Too heedless of, though not forgetting quite,
My Maker, and the songs that in the night
He gives His children; — He hath still'd
Those earthly echoes of His voice,
That, with its own sweet utterances fill'd,
I may the more in it and Him rejoice,
And feel that loss a gain, which ends in such a choice.

O! if one voice on earth no longer heard
Awake in me such longings;— if a bird
When it doth sing
Can to my heart such tender mem'ries bring,
And, when through some estrangement it doth cease,
Can, with its silence, so affect my peace; —
How dull and dead my inner life must be
If, through a purer sensibility,
With bended ear and lifted looks,
I hang not on Thy voice of Love,
And, when I miss Thee in life's shady nooks,
And unattended by Thy presence move;
If, as the hart pants for the water-brooks,
So longeth not my soul, O God! for Thee.
O! in the depths of Thy tranquillity,
The image of my pleading Saviour see,
And, looking upon that, remember me.

And when the things of time and sense,
And the poor limited intelligence
Which human knowledge brings my soul to guide,
When they distract me, and my love divide; —
O! fill me with Thy fulness, Lord! that so '
In spiritual knowledge I may grow,
And with expanding heart Thy secrets prove,
Till God's Great Being in me overflow.
In human things we know that we may love,
In things divine we love that we may know.