Read "To Dr. Hake" by Robert Louis Stevenson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
(On Receiving a Copy of Verses)
In the belovèd hour that ushers day, / In the pure dew, under the breaking grey, / One bird, ere yet the woodland choirs awake, / With brief réveillé summons all the brake: / Chirp, chirp, it goes; nor waits an answer long; / And that small signal fills the grove with song.
Thus on my pipe I breathed a strain or two; / It scarce was music, but 'twas all I knew.
It was not music, for I lacked the art, / Yet what but frozen music filled my heart?
Chirp, chirp, I went, nor hoped a nobler strain; / But Heaven decreed I should not pipe in vain, / For, lo! not far from there, in secret dale, / All silent, sat an ancient nightingale.
My sparrow notes he heard; thereat awoke; / And with a tide of song his silence broke.