Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NIGHTINGALE NEAR THE HOUSE by HAROLD MONRO

First Line: HERE IS THE SOUNDLESS CYPRESS ON THE LAWN
Last Line: THEN BREAKS, AND IT IS DAWN.
Subject(s): BIRDS; NIGHTINGALES;
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;
And 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.



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