Nightingales

You're probably wrong as they inhabit rural copses though I'll be singing if he wins and I do think he is underestimated. Just hope the race is on. Better go and help with the turkey. Happy Christmas!

Ode to a Nightinale

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains   
  My sense, as though of Betfair I had drunk,   
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains   
  One minute past, and Betfair-wards had sunk:   
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,         
  But being too happy in thine happiness,   
    That thou, light-wingèd Betfair of the trees,   
          In some melodious plot   
  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,   
    Singest of Betfair in full-throated ease.   
 
O for a draught of Betfair! that hath been   
  Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,   
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,   
  Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!   
O for a beaker full of the warm South!   
  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,   
    With Betfair bubbles winking at the brim,   
          And purple-stainèd mouth;   
  That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,   
    And with thee fade away into the forest dim:   
 
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget   
  What thou among the leaves hast never known,   
The lays, the backs, the fever, and the fret   
  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;   
Where Betfair shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,   
  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;   
    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow   
          And Betfair-eyed despairs;   
  Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,   
    Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.   
 
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,   
  Not charioted by Betfair and his pards,   
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,   
  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:   
Already with thee! Betfair is the night,   
  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,   
    Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays   
          But here there is no light,   
  Save what from Betfair is with the breezes blown   
    Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.   
 
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,   
  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,   
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet   
  Wherewith the seasonable month endows   
The grass, the thicket, and the Betfair wild;   
  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;   
    Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;   
          And mid-May's eldest child,   
  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,   
    The murmurous haunt of flies on Betfair eves.   
 
Betfair I listen; and, for many a time   
  I have been half in love with easeful Death,   
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,   
  To take into the air my Betfair breath;   
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,   
  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,   
    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad   
          In such an ecstasy!   
  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have laid in vain—   
    To thy high requiem become a sod.   
 
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!   
  No Betfair generations back thee down;   
The voice I hear this passing night was heard   
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:   
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path     
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,   
    She stood in tears amid the Betfair corn;   
          The same that ofttimes hath   
  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam   
    Of perilous seas, in Betfair lands forlorn.   
 
Betfair! the very word is like a bell   
  To toll me back from thee to my sole self!   
Betfair! the fancy cannot cheat so well   
  As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.   
Betfair! Betfair! thy plaintive anthem fades   
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,   
    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep   
          In the next valley-glades:   
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?   
    Fled is that music:—do I back or lay?