The Nightingale in the Study

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1. "Come forth!" my catbird calls to me,
2. "And hear me sing a cavatina
3. That, in this old familiar tree,
4. Shall hang a garden of Alcina.
5.  
6. "These buttercups shall brim with wine 5
7. Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic;
8. May not New England be divine?
9. My ode to ripening summer classic?
10.  
11. "Or, if to me you will not hark,
12. By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 10
13. Till all the alder-coverts dark
14. Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.
15.  
16. "Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
17. With its emancipating spaces,
18. And learn to sing as well as I, 15
19. Without premeditated graces.
20.  
21. "What boot your many-volumed gains,
22. Those withered leaves forever turning,
23. To win, at best, for all your pains,
24. A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? 20
25.  
26. "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies
27. On living trees the sun are drinking;
28. Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies,
29. Grew not so beautiful by thinking.
30.  
31. "Come out! with me the oriole cries, 25
32. Escape the demon that pursues you!
33. And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise,
34. Still hiding, farther onward wooes you."
35.  
36. "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,
37. Has poured from thy syringa thicket 30
38. The quaintly discontinuous lays
39. To which I hold a season-ticket,--
40.  
41. "A season-ticket cheaply bought
42. With a dessert of pilfered berries,
43. And who so oft my soul has caught 35
44. With morn and evening voluntaries,--
45.  
46. "Deem me not faithless, if all day
47. Among my dusty books I linger,
48. No pipe, like thee, for June to play
49. With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 40
50.  
51. "A bird is singing in my brain
52. And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies,
53. Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain
54. Fed with the sap of old romances.
55.  
56. "I ask no ampler skies than those 45
57. His magic music rears above me,
58. No falser friends, no truer foes,--
59. And does not Dona Clara love me?
60.  
61. "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars,
62. A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, 50
63. Then silence deep with breathless stars,
64. And overhead a white hand flashing.
65.  
66. "O music of all moods and climes,
67. Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly,
68. Where still, between the Christian chimes, 55
69. The moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!
70.  
71. "O life borne lightly in the hand,
72. For friend or foe with grace Castilian!
73. O valley safe in Fancy's land,
74. Not tramped to mud yet by the million! 60
75.  
76. "Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale
77. To his, my singer of all weathers,
78. My Calderon, my nightingale,
79. My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.
80.  
81. "Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 65
82. And still, God knows, in purgatory,
83. Give its best sweetness to all song,
84. To Nature's self her better glory."