624.

 Ode to a Nightingale
  
 
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
 
  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
 
  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
        
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,  5
 
  But being too happy in thine happiness,
 
    That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
 
          In some melodious plot
 
  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
  10
    Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
 
 
O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
 
  Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
 
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
 
  Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
  15
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
 
  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
 
    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
 
          And purple-stainèd mouth;
 
  That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
  20
    And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
 
 
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
 
  What thou among the leaves hast never known,
 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
 
  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
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Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
 
  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
 
    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
 
          And leaden-eyed despairs;
 
  Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
  30
    Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
 
 
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
 
  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
 
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
 
  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
  35
Already with thee! tender is the night,
 
  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
 
    Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
 
          But here there is no light,
 
  Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
  40
    Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
 
 
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
 
  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
 
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
  
  Wherewith the seasonable month endows
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The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
 
  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
 
    Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
 
          And mid-May's eldest child,
 
  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
  50
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
 
 
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
 
  I have been half in love with easeful Death,
 
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
 
  To take into the air my quiet breath;
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Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
 
  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
 
    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
 
          In such an ecstasy!
 
  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
  60
    To thy high requiem become a sod.
 
 
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
 
  No hungry generations tread thee down;
 
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
 
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:
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Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
 
  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
 
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
 
          The same that ofttimes hath
 
  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
  70
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
 
 
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
 
  To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
 
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
 
  As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
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Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
 
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
 
    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
 
          In the next valley-glades:
 
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
  80
    Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water’s edge, at the place

where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.