Was it I, who believed that within my time The moon coexistent with my ruinous State, and the bright contemporary nightingale Would fail; the moon to mathematical d**h, And the haunted bird from want of breath. Who will spread my rumours, noting the exact Date, when the great satellites crash to their fall, When the land settles, and empty sky regains Its cloudy impotence - O who will tell? Not under this moon, not the nightingale will -
This was never a century of the true Melancholy, the thickets are factories; The voice of the motor is the voice Of the greater; the voice of the lesser bird Is the cla**ic voice unheard. The moon with the landscape of its eye Would further the range of the nightingale's note; Never the words in the human throat. But I, Know the shaky cries of the new world bird as frail, Never the cries of the nightingale.