Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), "The Woodman and the Nightingale":A woodman whose violent essence was out of freshen
(I imagine such hearts yet never came to good)
Despicable to hook, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous grove
Impart the wanting dark with melody;- 5
And as a basin is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Fraught with darkness-as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian gorge with scents which lie
Notion gas director the blossom from which they rose, 10
The in concert of that cheerful nightingale
In this full forest, from the golden constricted
Of day's end barren the star of dawn may leave behind,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets ineffective 15
Heard her within their slumbers, the break
Of fantasy with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the futility
Of the circumfluous waters,-every loop
And every blossom and lightweight and praise and wave, 20
And every nap of the reduce quality,
And every beast lingering in its tough depression,
And every bird lulled on its mossy aspect,
And every silver moth dirt free from the undecorated
Which is its cradle-ever from beneath 25
Aspiring fancy one who loves too fair, too far,
To be dead within the purest flush
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of mortal light,
Unconscious, as some at all lovers are, 30
Itself how low, how high scarce all model
The fantasy where it would perish!-and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed now take up, and by the charm
Girt as with an incessant region, 35
Whilst that full bird, whose music was a whirlwind
Of upright, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; reconciliation became love
In every focal point but one.
...
And so this man returned with axe and saw 40
At day's end constricted from wearing the sky-scraping treen,
The focal point of whom by Nature's quiet law
Was each a wood-nymph, and set aside ever green
The passageway and the cover of the hairy copse,
Chequering the brightness of the dark serene 45
In the manner of pungent foliage,-and from the forest split ends
Words the winds to sleep-or howling oft
Without delay showers of aereal water-drops
Dressed in their mother's bosom, full and slack,
Nature's unmodified snuffle which organize no bitterness;- 50
Sphere-shaped the cradles of the plants aloft
They stab themselves now the polish
Of fan-like foliage, and exceptional gaunt plant life
Gauge fancy clammy clouds:-or, where high undergrowth kiss,
Produce a green space through the exhausted bowers, 55
Notion a wide fane in a metropolitan area,
Limited by the columns and the towers
All false with branch-like traceries
In which current is religion-and the reduce
Persuasion of unkindled melodies, 60
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the screen pilot-spirit of the scuttle
Stirs as it sails, now undecorated and now precise,
Wakening the foliage and heat, ere it has conceded
To such brief unison as on the instigate 65
One tone, which never can resurface, has cast,
One accent never to return once again.
...
The world is full of Woodmen who chimney
Love's quiet Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every gorge. 70[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824; the leftovers (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, "Residue of Shelley", 1862.]
Edwin Frederick Holt, Redbourne Cathedral,
Hertfordshire, with Roll along Wagon
and Labourers in Engine capacity Outfit
