Amy Levy

The Sick Man and the Nightingale

(From Lenau.)


So late, and yet a nightingale?
Long since have dropp’d the blossoms pale,
The summer fields are ripening,
And yet a sound of spring?

O tell me, didst thou come to hear,
Sweet Spring, that I should die this year;
And call’st across from the far shore
To me one greeting more?