For him by toils and troubles toss'd,
By wealth and wearying cares engross'd,
For him a Paradise is lost,

But not for happy creatures!

Come-though a glance it may be-come-
Enjoy, improve; then hurry home,

For life strong urgencies must bind us!
Yet mourn not; morn shall wake anew,
And we shall wake to bless it new.
Homewards! the herds that shake the dew,

We'll leave in peace behind us!

Anonymous Translation.

H. TOLLENS, 1778.

THE

Lark and Nightingale.

HE voices of these two noblest of the singing-birds of the Old World may be heard, in echoing accompaniment, throughout the prolonged choir of European poets, from the earliest dawn of civilization to the present hour. There are few poems of any length, in either of the languages of Europe, in which some allusion to one or the other has not a place. The noblest poets of the earth were born companions to these birds; beneath skies saluted by the lark, among groves haunted by the nightingale. These little creatures sung with Homer and Sappho among the isles of Greece-for Virgil and Horace on the plains of Italy; they cheered Dante in his lifelong wandering exile, and Petrarch in his solitary hermitage. Conceive also the joy with which Chaucer, and Shakspeare, and Spenser listened, each in his day, among the daisied fields of England, to music untaught, instinctive like their own! What pure delight, indeed, have these birds not given

to the heart of genius during thousands of springs and summers! How many generations have they not charmed with their undying melodies! They would almost seem by their sweetness to have soothed the inexorable powers of Time and Death. Were an old Greek or an ancient Roman to rise from the dust this summer's day-were he to awaken, after ages of sleep, to walk his native soil again, scarce an object on which his eye fell would wear a familiar aspect; scarce a sound which struck his ear but would vibrate there most strangely; yet with the dawn, rising from the plain of Marathon, or the Latin Hills, he would hear the same noble lark which sung in his boyhood; and with the moon, among the olives and ilexes shading the fallen temple, would come the same sweet nightingale which entranced his youth.

row.

THE NOTE OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

A LETTER OF CHARLES JAMES FOX.

DEAR GREY-In defense of my opinion about the nightingales, I find Chaucer who of all poets seems to have been the fondest of the singing of birds-calls it a merry note; and though Theocritus mentions nightingales six or seven times, he never mentions their note as plaintive or melancholy. It is true he does not call it anywhere merry, as Chaucer does, but by mentioning it with the song of the blackbird, and as answering it, he seems to imply that it was a cheerful note. Sophocles is against us; but he says, "lamenting Itys," and the comparison of her to Electra is rather as to perseverance, day and night, than as to sorAt all events, a tragic poet is not half so good authority in this question as Theocritus and Chaucer. I can not light upon the passage in the "Odyssey," where Penelope's restlessness is compared to the nightingale, but I am sure it is only as to restlessness that he makes the comparison. If you will read the last twelve books of the " Odyssey" you will certainly find it, and I am sure you will be paid for your hunt, whether you find it or not. The passage in Chaucer is in the Flower and Leaf." The one I particularly allude to in Theocritus is in his "Epigrams," I think in the fourth. Dryden has transferred the word merry to the goldfinch, in the "Flower and the Leaf"-in deference, may be, to the vulgar error. But pray read his description of the nightingale there; it is quite delightful. I am afraid that I like these researches as much better than those that relate to Shaftesbury and Sunderland, as I do those better than attending the House of Commons.

Yours affectionately,

C. J. Fox

The nightingale with so merry a note
Answered him, that all the wood rong
So sodainly, that as it were a sote,

I stood astonied, so was I with the song
Thorow ravished, that till late and long

I ne wist in what place I was, ne where;

And ayen, me thought, she song ever by mine ear.
CHAUCER'S" Flower and Leaf"

A goldfinch there I saw, with gaudy pride
Of painted plumes, that hopp'd from side to side,
Still perching as she pass'd; and still she drew
The sweets from every flower, and sucked the dew:
Suffic'd at length, she warbled in her throat,
And tun'd her voice to many a merry note,
But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear.
Her short performance was no sooner tried,
When she I sought, the nightingale, replied:
So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung,
That the grove echoed, and the valleys rung;
And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note,

I stood entranc'd, and had no room for thought;
But all o'erpower'd with an ecstasy of bliss,
Was in a pleasing dream of Paradise.

DRYDEN'S "Flower and Leaf."

As when the months are clad in flowery green,
Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen,

To vernal airs attunes her varied strains,
And Itylus sound warbling o'er the plains.
Young Itylus! his parent's darling joy,
Whom chance misled the mother to destroy,

Now doom'd a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy.
So in nocturnal solitude forlorn,

A sad variety of woes I mourn.

Odyssey, Book XIX.

SONNET.

O, nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray,
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still;
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes, that close the eye of day,

First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love; O if Jove's will
Have link'd that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh.
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:
Whether the muse or love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

JOHN MILTON,

THE NIGHTINGALE.

APRIL, 1798.

No cloud, no relic of the sunken day,
Distinguishes the west; no long, thin slip
Of sullen light--no obscure, trembling hues.
Come; we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring; it flows silently
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still-
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the nightingale begins its song,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
A melancholy bird! Oh, idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
'Tis the merrry nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast, thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His lone chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music!

I know a grove

Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass-
Thin grass, and king-cups grow within the paths.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales; and far and near,