Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/143

85 Now the low breeze

Which speaks soft music in warm summer-eves,

Comes sighing through the wood; but ere it pass

To ripple the calm stream, the giant grass,

Which one might fancy India's jungles bore,

Stays the young wanderer, with her whisper soft,

And each long streamer, trembling aloft,

Discourseth tones that murmuringly pour

Their music eloquent to listening ears;

And from the hills, that bend on either shore

Their gently-sloping and wood-clothed sides

Down to the rivers brim,

Comes, through the twilight dim,

Blent with the water's rippling as it glides,

The last small chirp of many a sleepy bird,

In varied tones, now near, now distant heard,

As if disturbed when close within the nest,

Their small heads warmly hid beneath their wings,

The wearied warblers had gone to rest.

Yet hark! a gush of melody, that rings

In rich full cadence o'er the silent earth;

A burst of music, whose soft echo brings

Tears, not of sorrow—smiles apart from mirth.

Oh! 'tis the silvery-voiced bird of eve,

The gentle nightingale, that now pours forth

Her love-lorn lay—so deem they who believe

That in her brilliant song she doth but grieve.