THE THRUSH'S NEST,

And by-and-bye, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted-over shells of green and blue;

And there I witness'd, in the Summer hours, A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

.

ND 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!

And 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 kingcups, 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 song
With skirmishes and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift—jug, jug—
And one low piping sound more sweet than all,—

THE NIGHTINGALE.

Stirring the air with such an harmony,

That, should you close

your eyes, you might almost Forget it was not day! On moonlight 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 full, Glistening, while many a glow-worm 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 moon
Emerging, hath awaken'd 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 down the vale, along the streamlet's edge,

Pursued our way, a broken company,

Mute or conversing, single or in pairs.

Thus having reach'd a bridge that overarch'd