The frolic wind that breathes the spring
Zephyr, with Aurora playing
As he met her once a Maying;
and, with beautiful propriety, as regards the season, he makes the
scenery
-----beds of violets blue,
And fresh blown roses wash’d in dew.
The first of his “sonnets” is to the nightingale warbling on a “bloomy
spray” at eve, while, as he figures,
“The jolly hours lead on propitious May.”
In “a Conversational Poem written in April,” by Mr. Coleridge, there is
a description of the nightingale’s song, so splendid that it may take
the place of extracts from other poets who have celebrated the charms of
the coming month, wherein this bird’s high melody prevails with
increasing power:--
All is still,
A balmy night! and tho’ the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark? the nightingale begins its song.
He crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful, that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music!
-------I know a grove
Of large extent, hard by a castle huge
Which the great lord inhabits not: and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass
Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales: and far and near
In wood and thicket over the wide grove
They answer and provoke each other’s songs--
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all--
Stirring the air with such a harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,
Whose dewy leafits are but half disclos’d,
You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full
Glist’ning, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.--------
---------Oft, a moment’s space,
What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence: till the moon
Emerging, hath awaken’d earth and sky
With one sensation, and those wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if one quick and sudden gale had swept
An hundred airy harps! And I have watch’d
Many a nightingale perch’d giddily
On blos’my twig, still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.
~May 1.~
_St. Philip_, and _St. James_ the less. _St. Asaph_, Bp. of
Llan-Elway, A. D. 590. _St. Marcon_, or _Marculfus_, A. D. 558. _St.
Sigismund_, king of Burgundy, 6th Cent.
_St. Philip_ and _St. James_.
Philip is supposed to have been the first of Christ’s apostles, and to
have died at Hierapolis, in Phrygia. James, also surnamed the Just,
whose name is borne by the epistle in the New Testament, and who was in
great repute among the Jews, was martyred in a tumult in the temple,
about the year 62.[119] St. Philip and St. James are in the church of
England Calendar.
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