IMMORTAL BIRDSONG.
Reading edition
WHAT though mine ear hath never heard The wing’d voice of the sky? Nor listened to the love-lorn bird Whose plaints in darkness die? The poets improvise for me Lark-notes that never fail, And make more sweet than sound can be The song of nightingale. From rapt Alastor’s lyric leaves Joy’s flying carol springs! On darkling pinion sorrow grieves When Adonais sings. I list the lavrock warbling clear In birks of bonny Doon; The bulbul’s swooning voice I hear, Beneath the Persian moon. I hear across the centuries What Philomela sung, In Attic groves, to Sophocles, When Poesie was young.