Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
The Nightingale
A Conversation Poem. April, 1798.
1No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
2Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
3Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
4Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
5You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
6But hear no murmuring: it flows silently,
7O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
8A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
9Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
10That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
11A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
12And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,
13"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
14A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!
15In nature there is nothing melancholy.
16But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
17With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
18Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
19(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,
20And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
21Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,
22First named these notes a melancholy strain.
23And many a poet echoes the conceit;
24Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
25When he had better far have stretched his limbs
26Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
27By sun or moon-light, to the influxes
28Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
29Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
30And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
31Should share in Nature's immortality,
32A venerable thing! and so his song
33Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
34Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;
35And youths and maidens most poetical,
36Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring
37In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still
38Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs
39O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
40 My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt
41A different lore; we may not thus profane
42Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
43And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale
44That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
45With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
46As he were fearful that an April night
47Would be too short for him to utter forth
48His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
49Of all its music!
49 And I know a grove
50Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
51Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
52This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
53And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
54Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.
55But never elsewhere in one place I knew
56So many nightingales; and far and near,
57In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
58They answer and provoke each other's song,
59With skirmish and capricious passagings,
60And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
61And one low piping sound more sweet than all---
62Stirring the air with such a harmony,
63That should you close your eyes, you might almost
64Forget it was not day! On moon-lit bushes,
65Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,
66You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
67Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
68Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade
69Lights up her love-torch.
69 A most gentle Maid,
70Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
71Hard by the castle, and at latest eve
72(Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate
73To something more than Nature in the grove)
74Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,
75That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment's space,
76What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
77Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon
78Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
79With one sensation, and these wakeful birds
80Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
81As if some sudden gale had swept at once
82A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched
83Many a nightingale perched giddily
84On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
85And to that motion tune his wanton song
86Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.
87 Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,
88And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
89We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
90And now for our dear homes.---That strain again!
91Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
92Who, capable of no articulate sound,
93Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
94How he would place his hand beside his ear,
95His little hand, the small forefinger up,
96And bid us listen! And I deem it wise
97To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well
98The evening-star! and once, when he awoke
99In most distressful mood (some inward pain
100Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream---)
101I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,
102And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,
103Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
104While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears,
105Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well!---
106It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven
107Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
108Familiar with these songs, that with the night
109He may associate joy.---Once more, farewell,
110Sweet Nightingale! Once more, my friends! farewell.
Notes
4] The reader does not find out to whom the "we" refers until later in line 40. The ambiguity results in an inclusive gesture, inviting the reader into the "conversation" of the poem.
13] The quotation is from Milton's "Il Penseroso," line 62. Coleridge's note for this line reads: "This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description. It is spoken in the character of the melancholy man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity, to a line in Milton."
16-23] These lines are remarkable for the importance they place on the unknown, "night-wandering" man over Milton and other great poets.
24] There is an echo here of Milton's "Lycidas," lines 10-11:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
Lofty "rhymes" (i.e. poems), typical of Milton and other earlier poets, are being rejected by Coleridge's poem.
39] In Greek legend, Philomela was a princess of Athens. Her sister's husband, Tereus, raped her and cut out her tongue. She, her sister, and Tereus were all turned into birds by the gods to prevent Tereus from murdering the sisters. In earlier versions of the story, Philomela is turned into a swallow while her sister, Procne, is turned into a nightingale. In later tradition, Philomela is turned into a nightingale.
40] The friend is almost certainly William Wordsworth, and the sister is Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy. The use of "our" instead of "your" to characterize Dorothy is another example of an inclusive gesture in the poem.
48] disburthen: an older spelling of disburden. The word "burthen" (occassionally "burden") is sometimes used to mean the refrain of a song.
60] The phrase "jug jug" has been used in literature since at least the sixteenth century as an imitation of part of the nightingale's song.
73] The Maid is being compared, tacitly, to a nun---or possibly to a Druidic priestess.
91] Coleridge's baby, Hartley, was born in September 1796: he was about nineteen months old at the time Coleridge composed this poem.
98] The evening star is the planet Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: The Poems of S. T. Coleridge (London: William Pickering, 1844): 167-70.
First publication date:
1798
Publication date note: Lyrical Ballads
RPO poem editor: Marc R. Plamondon
RP edition: 2005
Recent editing: 2:2005/9/10
Composition date:
April
1798
Form: blank verse
Rhyme: unrhymed
Other poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
