Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
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ike clouds above the flower from which they rose, _10The singing of that happy nightingaleIn this sweet forest, from the golden close Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,Was interfused upon the silentness;The folded roses and the violets pale _15 Heard her within their slumbers, the abyssOf heaven with all its planets; the dull earOf the night-cradled earth; the loneliness Of the circumfluous waters,--every sphereAnd every flower and beam and cloud and wave, _20And every wind of the mute atmosphere, And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,And every silver moth fresh from the grave Which is its cradle--ever from below _25Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,To be consumed within the purest glow Of one serene and unapproached star,As if it were a lamp of earthly light,Unconscious, as some human lovers are, _30 Itself how low, how high beyond all heightThe heaven where it would perish!--and every formThat worshipped in the temple of the night Was awed into delight, and by the charmGirt as with an interminable zone, _35Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivionOut of their dreams; harmony became loveIn every soul but one. ... And so this man returned with axe and saw _40At evening close from killing the tall treen,The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever greenThe pavement and the roof of the wild copse,Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene _45 With jagged leaves,--and from the forest topsSinging the winds to sleep--or weeping oftFast showers of aereal water-drops Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;-- _50Around the cradles of the birds aloft
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