At Minas Basin and Other Poems — The Nightingale

THE NIGHTINGALE.

O seraph bird who on God's altar-stairs Dost ring, in showers of silver peals, thy bells Of song that ceaseless flows like dropping-wells, And sprinkles all the dusk with holy prayers!

O welkin glad, shot through and through with song, As upward springs the spirit tipt with flame!

'Tis not to Itys dead nor Dian's shame These joy-pangs, with their hint of tears, belong.

The life which pulses in the bursting year A thousand choirs hymn on the sunlit globe;

But, lest the living flame to ashes turn, Thou, in the voiceless night, O priestly seer, Interpreter of nature, tak'st thy robe, And fill'st with vocal fire the sacred urn.