Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

The Nightingale

James Thomson (1700–1748)

OFT when, returning with her loaded bill,

Th’ astonish’d mother finds a vacant nest,

By the hard hand of unrelenting clown

Robb’d; to the ground the vain provision falls;

Her pinions ruffle, and low-drooping scarce

Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade;

Where, all abandoned to despair, she sings

Her sorrows thro’ the night; and on the bough

Sole-sitting, still at every dying fall

Takes up again her lamentable strain

Of winding woe, till, wide around, the woods

Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.