Classic Poem

Emerging at midnight
to cool my aching eyes with the sight of stars
I hear the nightingale
throbbing in the thicket by my garden gate.

and I think:
A poet in the old days would have made a song
of your song and the starlit night
the scent of wallflowers clinging to the ground.

But now it is different:
you sing but we are silent
our hearts too sadly patient
all these years.

Sing on! The night is cool.
Morning and the world will be lit
with whitebeam candles shining and O the frail
and tender daring splendour of wild cherrytrees.