Northampton Local May/June 17

36
Q U A R T E R P A G E A D V E R T S C O S T J U S T £ 3 0
POEM CORNER
To A Nightingale
Poem donated by David Garrett
Do I wake or sleep? For many years have flown as a tribute to John Keats
Since last I drank the sound of your sweet voice,
To hear your warbling song on breezes blown
When sitting in verdurous gloom was fain my choice.
To listen to you sobbed, outgoing song
Could almost cure the fervour's of this troubled world,
Pray it could put to right the numbing wrongs
With lessons from your mildness now unfurled.
The precept that you teach should now be told
Humility in dress, no fancy gown,
That such a tiny bird our awe could hold
With feathers seen so plain as russet brown.
One hundred and ninety years have passed
Gone are the woodland glades where I would roam
They’ve disappeared as progresses vile blast
Has eaten up the humble wildlife’s home.
Voices from afar call to my soul, where lies these rural woods and quiet glades?
Where nightingales performed their canticle, where music from my passions
numbly fades.
O sing once more for me from darkling wood, where deathly silence caresses
now my mind, no wood nymph winging through the swaying leaves, or hidden
nest among the brambles do I find.
Perhaps as years go past they will return, to hold an audience engrossed once
more, I plead that there will be some habitat, to bring this wandering migrant to
our shores.
So as again two hundred years will pass, and someone walking through a copse
as looms twilight, will stop in wonderment and gasp, at the awe inspiring music
of the night.
Then all who once shared this apostles song, can rest in deaths sweet silence,
knowing that a bird that was not ever born to die will live forever as an unbowed
diplomat; and I will know in song strewn arbours now my spirits lie.
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