Said a people to a poet - "Go out from among us straightway!
While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine.
There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateways
Makes fitter music to our ears than any song of thine!"
The poet went out weeping-the nightingale ceased chanting;
"Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?"
I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,
Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun."
The poet went out weeping, - and died abroad, bereft there -
The bird flew to his grave and died, amid a thousand wails: -
And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there
Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
