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From “Music’s Duel”
NOW westward Sol had spent the richest beams | |
| Of noon’s high glory, when, hard by the streams | |
| Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat, | |
| Under protection of an oak, there sat | |
| A sweet lute’s-master, in whose gentle airs | 5 |
| He lost the day’s heat and his own hot cares. | |
| Close in the covert of the leaves there stood | |
| A nightingale, come from the neighboring wood | |
| (The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree, | |
| Their muse, their siren, harmless siren she): | 10 |
| There stood she listening, and did entertain | |
| The music’s soft report, and mould the same | |
| In her own murmurs; that whatever mood | |
| His curious fingers lent, her voice made good. * * * * * | |
| This lesson too | 15 |
| She gives them back; her supple breast thrills out | |
| Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt | |
| Of dallying sweetness, hovers o’er her skill, | |
| And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill, | |
| The pliant series of her slippery song; | 20 |
| Then starts she suddenly into a throng | |
| Of short thick sobs, whose thundering volleys float, | |
| And roll themselves over her lubric throat | |
| In panting murmurs, stilled out of her breast; | |
| That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest | 25 |
| Of her delicious soul, that there does lie | |
| Bathing in streams of liquid melody; | |
| Music’s best seed-plot; when in ripened airs | |
| A golden-headed harvest fairly rears | |
| His honey-dropping tops ploughed by her breath | 30 |
| Which there reciprocally laboreth. | |
| In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire, | |
| Sounded to the name of great Apollo’s lyre; | |
| Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes | |
| Of sweet-lipped angel-imps, that swill their throats | 35 |
| In cream of morning Helicon, and then | |
| Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, | |
| To woo them from their beds, still murmuring | |
| That men can sleep while they their matins sing | |
| (Most divine service), whose so early lay | 40 |
| Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day. | |
| There might you hear her kindle her soft voice | |
| In the close murmur of a sparkling noise; | |
| And lay the groundwork of her hopeful song. | |
| Still keeping in the forward stream so long, | 45 |
| Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out) | |
| Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about, | |
| And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast, | |
| Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest, | |
| Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky, | 50 |
| Winged with their own wild echoes, prattling fly. | |
| She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide | |
| Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride | |
| On the waved back of every swelling strain, | |
| Rising and falling in a pompous train; | 55 |
| And while she thus discharges a shrill peal | |
| Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal | |
| With the cool epode of a graver note; | |
| Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat | |
| Would reach the brazen voice of war’s hoarse bird; | 60 |
| Her little soul is ravished, and so poured | |
| Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed | |
| Above herself, music’s enthusiast. | |
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