
Nightingdale ~ British Trust for Ornithology
* * *
‘The Nightingdale’
Sing! Sweet songster of the Spring supreme!
Sing! For trembling in thine airy song,
Youth, long lost, returns to live again.
Sing! Though sorrow rise, and wild desire. Sing!
*
Though thy winged notes awaken hidden despair,
And fan to flames our heart’s dead fire. Sing! Sing!
Dear songster, sing!…..nor cease, for in thy voice
I hear the Muse’s lyre, and raptures, breathe
Elysian air.
*
Sing on, sweet bird, until
My heart the stairway of ascent hath found
To song’s high throne. Sing! Till my poor soul fling
Off her chains, to move in unison with life’s
Great whole,
the swift pulsation of the stars
Mine own, the rhythm of the unfolding flowers,
The swinging measure of all growing things,
That rise and sink beneath the Master’s wand.
*
Sing! And then descend into silence, while thy heart,
Poised in the heavens thy soaring song hath found,
Beat out the bars of joy’s full rhapsody,
Where life returns through death to birth again,
And God for evermore is newly risen.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥