The moonlight fell down calm and clear, and sheeted
The summer night in silver, and the moon—
A pale resemblance of the sun—repeated
His glories to the earth, and was a boon
To her like that which gentle memory
Supplies to loving hearts that sundered be.
And in this hour of calm and consolation,
Of sweet regrets and toil-fulfilling rest,
Back to the earth returned the day's oblation
Of passionate outpouring; on her breast
It fell in silent tears, which did renew
Her weary, loving heart with their mild dew.
Silent was all, as the deep hush of night
Could make it; and the moonbeam's shimmering track
Along the lake, though changing in the light
Like glittering scales on some sea-monster's back,
Had scarcely more of motion than the reeds
Which slept among the margin's water-beads.
Silent was all, while sleep and rest, restoring
The waste of life, were softly at their work;—
All but one wakeful bird his song out-pouring,
And one poor human heart, which toil and irk
And stress of busy life, had vainly pressed;—
The nightingale, and poet, could not rest.
The bird had sprung from out his leafy lair,
Where jealous watch he kept upon the rose,
And scattering silence round him, thrilled the air,
And made night musical with lyric woes;
While all unheeding, cold, yet fair to view,
The rose lay slumbering in her veil of dew.
The poet at his casement, gazed afar
To where, across the lake, fair Lilian lay;
She was the magnet of his heart, his star,—
An idol which his fancy wrought in clay.
There in her chamber, careless of his throes,
She slept as dreamless as the slumbering rose.
Poor poet heart! Wake through the livelong hours,
Mark with thy fevered beat, the langorous time;
Weave thy wild thought with rhetoric's ordered flowers,
And make a 'posie' for thy love, of rhyme:
She may not value it, but there are others
Alive upon the earth—sisters and brothers.
So on through many a night these watches twain
Poured out their burning hearts in streams of song;
And who shall say they sung or loved in vain,
Though sleeplessly, and wearily, and long,
And fruitlessly they waited for some token
That the dull sleep of the beloved was broken?
Nay, erring, blind, misguided, but not vain,
One single throb of love can ever be.
The poet in these nights of sleepless pain
Is sitting on his student's form, where he,
With toil, and eke with tears, must get by heart
The lesson which shall fit him for his part.
He learns to love; the heart fair Lilian entered
Will soon be open as a royal hall,
In which her image still is throned and centred,
But where he entertains the claims of all.
So, like a beacon which the torch divine
Of love has kindled, shall is genius shine.
And that poor bird, whose wakeful soul finds vent
In such sweet plainings that his life has been
Fabled as one adoring discontent
Hereditary to his race, I ween
He is the poet of his kind, whose strain
Interprets to each heart its own fond pain.