Part 2 — THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY.

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