Page:Lyrical ballads, Volume 1, Wordsworth, 1800.djvu/147

95 And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,

"Most musical, most melancholy" Bird!

A melancholy Bird? O idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

—But some night-wandering Man, whose heart was pierc'd

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper or neglected love,

(And so, poor Wretch! fill'd all things with himself

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale

Of his own sorrows) he and such as he

First named these notes a melancholy strain:

And many a poet echoes the conceit;

Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme