Vi

“Alas! the nightingale I never heard. Yet I, remembering how your voice would thrill Me with exalted expectation, felt The passion-throated nightingale would win Into my soul in some wild way like this, With reminiscences of dusks long dead, Presentiments of nights, that mate the flowers And the prompt stars, and marry them with song. Of such,--love whispered me when deep in dreams,-- I made my nightingale. It is a voice Heard in the April of our year of love:

Between the stars and roses There lies a path no man may see, Where every breeze that blows is A wandering melody; Down which each bright star gazes Upon each rose that raises Its face up lovingly, As if with prayers and praises.

The star and rose are wiser Than all but love beneath the skies; No hoard of any miser Is rich as these are wise: No bee may reach or rifle, No mist may cloud or stifle Their love that never dies, That knows nor trick nor trifle.

There is a bird that carries Love-messages; and comes and goes Between each star that tarries, And every rose that blows: A bird that can not tire, Whose throat ’s a throbbing lyre, Whose song is now a rose, And now a starry fire.