Classic Poem

Les rossignols

Night hath slackened the speed of the Hours;
Paris sinks into slumber profound:
Wake, O dearly loved birds in your bowers;
Charm away the dull echoes around!
Pensive now are all hearts, and 'tis right
That a glance on our own we should fling:
How delicious this silence of night!
Sweetest nightingales, sing for me, sing!

Go not near Phryne's haunts, or be dumb,
Ye who chant for love faithful and true!
Phryne renders each night newly come
The accomplice of loves that are new
But if kisses from ecstasy free
May have sealed hollow oaths — still I cling
To my faith that true love there may be —
Sweetest nightingales, sing for me, sing!

Though there's none to play Zoilus' part,
Do ye hope, as your concert you hold,
That 'tis touched — that insensible heart
Of the miser who's counting his gold?
When the night with its thieves and its wiles
Must his bosom with agony wring,
With the Muses my Poverty smiles:
Sweetest nightingales, sing for me, sing!

Ye, who hover aloof from a cage,
All your tenderest warblings refuse
For the nobles, who, age after age,
Carry fetters — and gladly would use!
Whilst in silence their watch they must keep,
Standing up round the couch of a King,
I my incense to Liberty heap:
Sweetest nightingales, sing for me, sing!

But your voices are more and more clear;
No, ye love not promoters of ill:
Now the perfume of Spring's wafted here
With the sweets of the notes that you trill
Nature's graving her law on my heart
With a charm that old days could not bring;
Ere the morning I cannot depart:
Sweetest nightingales, sing to me, sing!