Midst the reeds and pebbles hiding,
See the minnow and the roach:
Or by water-lilies gliding,
Shun with fear our near approach.
Do not dread us, timid fishes,
We have neither net nor hook ;
Wanderers we, whose only wishes
Are to read in Nature's book.
FOR lo! no sooner has the cold withdrawn,
Than the bright elm is tufted on the lawn;
The merry sap has run up in the bowers,
And burst the windows of the buds in flowers;
With song the bosoms of the birds run o'er,
The cuckoo calls, the swallow's at the door,
And apple-trees at noon, with bees alive,
Burn with the golden chorus of the hive.
Now all these sweets, these sounds, this vernal blaze
Is but one joy, expressed a thousand ways:
And honey from the flowers, and song from birds, Are from the poet's pen his overflowing words.
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 merry 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 love-chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music!
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,
In wood and thicket over the wide grove,
They answer and provoke each other's songs-
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all-
Stirring the air with such a harmony,
That, should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moonlit bushes
Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,
You may, perchance, behold them on the twigs,
Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and
Glistening, while many a glowworm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.
And oft a moment's space,
What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moor
Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
With one sensation, and these wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if some sudden gale had swept at once.
A hundred airy harps! And I have watched
Many a nightingale perched giddily
On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.
THE insect-world, now sunbeams higher climb,
Oft dream of Spring, and wake before their time.
Bees stroke their little legs across their wings,
And venture short flights where the snowdrop brings
Its silver bell, and winter aconite
Its buttercup-like flowers that shut at night,
With green leaf furling round its cup of gold,
Like tender maiden muffled from the cold;
They sip, and find their honey-dreams are vain,
Then feebly hasten to their hives again.
The butterflies by eager hopes undone,
Glad as a child come out to greet the sun :
Beneath the shadow of a sudden shower
Are lost-nor see to-morrow's April flower.
I IN the flow'ry meads would be:
The crystal streams should solace me;
To whose harmonious bubbling noise
I with my angle would rejoice,
Sit here, and see the turtle-dove
Court his chaste mate to acts of love:
Or on that bank feel the west wind
Breathe health and plenty, please my mind
To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers,
And then washed off by April showers:
Here hear my Kenna sing a song,
There see a blackbird feed her young,
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