The nightingale with so _merry a note_
Answered him, that all the wood rong
So sodainly, that as it were a sote,
I stood astonied, so was I with the song
Thorow ravished, that till late and long
I ne wist in what place I was, ne where;
And ayen, me thought, she song ever by mine ear.
CHAUCER’S “_Flower and Leaf_.”
A goldfinch there I saw, with gaudy pride
Of painted plumes, that hopp’d from side to side,
Still perching as she pass’d; and still she drew
The sweets from every flower, and sucked the dew:
Suffic’d at length, she warbled in her throat,
And tun’d her voice to many _a merry note_,
But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear.
Her short performance was no sooner tried,
When she I sought, the nightingale, replied:
So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung,
That the grove echoed, and the valleys rung;
And I so ravish’d with her heavenly note,
I stood entranc’d, and had no room for thought;
But all o’erpower’d with an ecstasy of bliss,
Was in a pleasing dream of Paradise.
DRYDEN’S “_Flower and Leaf_.”
As when the months are clad in flowery green,
_Sad Philomel_, in bowery shades unseen,
To vernal airs attunes her varied strains,
And Itylus sound warbling o’er the plains.
Young Itylus! his parent’s darling joy,
Whom chance misled the mother to destroy,
Now doom’d a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy.
_So in nocturnal solitude forlorn_,
A sad variety of woes I mourn.
_Odyssey, Book XIX._