The sweet June night but half withdrawn,
The watchful stars grown hardly pale,
While dews slept lightly on the lawn,
And mists hung dreaming in the vale,
I waked, and with me woke the dawn,—
Thy voice had called us, nightingale!

Thou flutedest at my window-pane,
And while I shed remorseful tears,
Spendthrift! I seemed to hear thee rain
In one rapt song the long arrears
Of all the passion I in vain
Had hoarded through the loveless years.

The pale dawn flushed the while I heard
Thee pour from some deep fount divine
Such joy, such pain as heart of bird
Could hardly hold. That song of thine
Which all my slumbering being stirred—
Could any part in it be mine?

Dear prophet! If thou hast foreshown
My future in that wondrous tale
Be half the high portent thine own;
For love so fervid to avail
Love's depths to sound, its heights to scale,
Some form seraphic should enthrone
Thy sleepless heart, O nightingale!