Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AN EVENING ADDRESS TO A NIGHTINGALE, SELECTION, by CUTHBERT SHAW


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AN EVENING ADDRESS TO A NIGHTINGALE, SELECTION, by                    
First Line: Sweet bird! That, kindly perching near
Last Line: "and opes a glorious passage to the skies.'"
Subject(s): Birds; Nightingales


"Sweet bird! that, kindly perching near,
Pourest thy plaints melodious in mine ear,
Not like base worldlings, tutored to forgo
The melancholy haunts of woe;
Thanks for thy sorrow-soothing strain:—
For, surely, thou hast known to prove,
Like me, the pangs of hopeless love;
Else why so feelingly complain,
And with thy pious notes thus sadden all the grove?"

"Say, dost thou mourn thy ravished mate,
That oft enamoured on thy strains has hung?
Or has the cruel hand of Fate
Bereft thee of thy darling young?
Alas, for both, I weep—

In all the pride of youthful charms,
A beauteous bride torn from my circling arms!
A lovely babe that should have lived to bless,
And fill my doting eyes with frequent tears,
At once the source of rapture and distress,
The flattering prop of my declining years!
In vain from death to rescue I essayed,
By every art that science could devise,
Alas! it languished for a mother's aid,
And winged its flight to seek her in the skies.
Then, O our comforts be the same,
At evening's peaceful hour,
To shun the noisy paths of wealth and fame,
And breathe our sorrows in this lonely bower."

"'Just Heaven,' I cried—with recent hopes elate,
'Yet I will live—will live, though Emma's dead—
So long bowed down beneath the storms of Fate,
Yet will I raise my woe-dejected head!
My little Emma, now my all,
Will want a father's care,
Her looks, her wants, my rash resolves recall,
And for her sake the ills of life I'll bear:
And oft together we'll complain,
Complaint, the only bliss my soul can know,
From me my child shall learn the mournful strain,
And prattle tales of woe.
And O in that auspicious hour,
When Fate resigns her persecuting power,
With duteous zeal her hand shall close,
No more to weep—my sorrow-streaming eyes,
When death gives misery repose,
And opes a glorious passage to the skies.'"





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