The Month of the Nightingale

It was in the month of the nightingale,
I found my love !
Flowing with rivers of light in the vale,
Haunting a heart of moonlight pale,
The bird o'erflowed ;;
Or in the dusk of his green abode
A cuckoo vied
With the lovesong tide,
And with a lark's divine delight
In a fountainous, azure-imbathed flight :
We lay and listened, I and my love,
We lay and listened in the grove ;
Butterflies blue
Merrily flew
Over wood-sorrel dewy wet ;
Mossed windflower and violet
Thrilled in the air, and our lips met :
From under a shade of sunny boughs
We saw the green blade sprout in the brown
Field fallows, and far haze of the town,
Cattle in misty water-meadow browze,
And young lambs play
In far fields of May.
All the young happiness of spring
Supremely flowered, burst forth, took wing,
In two young hearts to sing,
In two young lovers, in our own love,
Pure and happy as the saints above !
Now in the month of the nightingale
I have lost my love !
And I heed no more the tender tale.
But I hear the sorrow in a flute-like wail
Deliciously complain ;
No pain to him,
No sorrow to the bird in his covert dim ;
Only foreboding of a human pain,
Searing hearts to a barren plain.
When we find the love we deemed immortal
Only death's flower-enwoven portal !
And we wander alone,
In a desolate land alone, alone.
Hearing a dove's low, soft love-moan,
Among primroses and young buds,
Where cresses waver in the clear spring floods.
I know not how Love faints away,
And with him all the bloom from day.
And with him all divine delight
From dull unconsecrated night ;
I know not how Love dies, nor how he is born ;
I know my life is left forlorn.