The Nightingale Near the House

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn : It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond Stares. And you sing, you sing.

That star-enchanted song falls through the air From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound, Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground ; While all the night you sing.

My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee, As all night long I listen, and my brain Receives your song, then loses it again In moonlight on the lawn.

Now is your voice a marble high and white, Then like a mist on fields of paradise ; Now is a raging fire, then is like ice, Then breaks, and it is dawn.