The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem

“The Nightingale” is a lyric poem in blank verse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the major poets of the English Romantic movement. It was first published in Lyrical Ballads (1798), a groundbreaking collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Coleridge that marks the beginning of the Romantic movement in England. “The Nightingale” was one of four poems that Coleridge contributed to the collection. Coleridge subtitled it “a conversation poem, April 1798,” and it is one of several such informal poems that he wrote during the period between 1795 and 1798. The speaker, Coleridge himself, is taking an evening walk with his friends Wordsworth and Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy, in the environs of Alfoxden, near Bridgwater, Somerset. When they hear the song of the nightingale, Coleridge rejects the traditional notion of the melancholy nature of the song. On the contrary, he regards the song of the bird as an expression of the joy that he and his friends find everywhere in nature. Thus, “The Nightingale,” with its theme of the love and joy that nature embodies, can be seen as a typical poem of English Romanticism. The edition used for this study guide is the Representative Poetry Online (RPO) edition, 2005.

Content Warning: The poem briefly alludes to the story of Philomela in Greek mythology. In this guide, discussion of the myth contains mention of sexual assault and violence.

Poet Biography

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772, in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, England. His father died when Coleridge was nine. In 1791, Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge, but left three years later without a degree. In that year, 1794, he met the poet Robert Southey, and they conceived a utopian project called Pantisocracy, according to which they would move to America and set up a commune in Pennsylvania. The project fell through within a year, as Southey’s interests turned elsewhere. In 1795, Coleridge lived in Bristol, where he first met William Wordsworth. Coleridge married Sara Fricker in October—the marriage was not to be a happy one—and moved to Clevedon, Somerset, where he wrote “The Eolian Harp” (1796), his first “conversation poem.”

The following year, his son, Hartley, was born, the family moved to the village of Nether Stowey, and Coleridge published Poems on Various Subjects (1796). His friendship with Wordsworth developed, and Wordsworth and his sister moved to nearby Alfoxden. The two men spent time together almost every day and greatly influenced each other’s thought and poetry. In 1797, Coleridge wrote “Kubla Khan” and the first part of “Christabel”; the following year, he and Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads, which included Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner” and “The Nightingale.” In 1799, Coleridge and Wordsworth traveled to the European continent, and Coleridge studied German in Göttingen. Back in England, the following year, he worked as a journalist for the Morning Post, and he moved to Keswick, in the Lake District, not far from Grasmere, where the Wordsworths were living. All was not well, however. Coleridge’s marriage was deteriorating, and he had fallen in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth’s future wife. Moreover, his health was poor, and he was becoming dependent on opium.

From 1804 to 1806, Coleridge was secretary to the governor of Malta, but his health continued to decline, and he was now addicted to opium. He did, however, manage to publish a periodical, The Friend, for nearly a year, from 1809 to 1810. In 1816, he moved to London, where a physician, James Gillman, took him into his Highgate home as a patient. This proved something of a rescue for Coleridge, enabling him to stabilize his life and become more productive. Over subsequent years, he received many distinguished visitors from the literary and philosophical worlds and was sometimes known as the Sage of Highgate. He gave lectures about poetry and philosophy and published books including Sibylline Leaves (1817), Biographia Literaria, a work of literary criticism (1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), Poetical Works (1828), and On the Constitution of Church and State (1830). He died on July 25, 1834, in Highgate.

Poem Text

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day

Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip

Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.

Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!

You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,

But hear no murmuring: it flows silently,

O’er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,

A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,

Yet let us think upon the vernal showers

That gladden the green earth, and we shall find

A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,

“Most musical, most melancholy” bird!

A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale

Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,

First named these notes a melancholy strain.

And many a poet echoes the conceit;

Poet who hath been building up the rhyme

When he had better far have stretched his limbs

Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moon-light, to the influxes

Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements

Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song

And of his fame forgetful! so his fame

Should share in Nature's immortality,

A venerable thing! and so his song

Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself

Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;

And youths and maidens most poetical,

Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring

In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still

Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs

O’er Philomela’s pity-pleading strains.

My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt

A different lore; we may not thus profane

Nature's sweet voices, always full of love

And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale

That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates

With fast thick warble his delicious notes,

As he were fearful that an April night

Would be too short for him to utter forth

His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul

Of all its music!

And I know a grove

Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,

Which the great lord inhabits not; and so

This grove is wild with tangling underwood,

And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,

Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.

But never elsewhere in one place I knew

So many nightingales; and far and near,

In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,

They answer and provoke each other's song,

With skirmish and capricious passagings,

And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,

And one low piping sound more sweet than all—

Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That should you close your eyes, you might almost

Forget it was not day! On moon-lit bushes,

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may perchance behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,

Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade

Lights up her love-torch.

A most gentle Maid,

Who dwelleth in her hospitable home

Hard by the castle, and at latest eve

(Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate

To something more than Nature in the grove

Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,

That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment's space,

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,

Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon

Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky

With one sensation, and these wakeful birds

Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

As if some sudden gale had swept at once

A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched

Many a nightingale perched giddily

On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,

And to that motion tune his wanton song

Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,

And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!

We have been loitering long and pleasantly,

And now for our dear homes.—That strain again!

Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,

Who, capable of no articulate sound,

Mars all things with his imitative lisp,

How he would place his hand beside his ear,

His little hand, the small forefinger up,

And bid us listen! And I deem it wise

To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well

The evening-star! and once, when he awoke

In most distressful mood (some inward pain

Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream—)

I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,

And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,

Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,

While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears,

Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well!—

It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven

Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up

Familiar with these songs, that with the night

He may associate joy.—Once more, farewell,

Sweet Nightingale! Once more, my friends! farewell.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Nightingale.” 1798. Representative Poetry Online.

Summary

On a warm April evening, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (the speaker) and two friends, William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, are taking a walk in nature. They sit down on a bridge to rest, and Coleridge encourages them to listen to the song of a nightingale. He disputes the notion popularized by poets like John Milton that the bird’s song is melancholy. On the contrary, the nightingale shares in nature’s eternal beauty and makes it even lovelier.

Coleridge then addresses his friends, knowing that they are all in agreement that nature is an expression of love and joy. The poet comments that he knows a wild grove where an empty castle stands. The grove is full of nightingales; their sweet and harmonious sound fills the air.

Coleridge adds that a young woman lives near the castle, and she knows every note of the nightingale’s song. Once, as she walked in the grove, the moon was obscured by a cloud, and there was a pause in the sound of the nightingales. Then the song burst forth again, and the woman watched as the nightingales perched on twigs and sang in the breeze.

Coleridge then says goodbye to the nightingales and his friends, and his thoughts turn to his infant son. Once, when the baby was crying, his father took him outside to look at the moon, and he was immediately soothed. Coleridge hopes that as the child grows up, he will always be familiar with the nightingale’s song and will experience joy as he hears it at night.