Nightingale

“ It is always old, old-fashioned ailment, worn of ages. The drowsy ache of the Nightingale goes a thousand years back and a thousand years to come: the restless ecstasy of a thousand thousand Nightingales, one for each who reads, in any age, all ages. ”

“ Think, girls, of the Nightingale’s fate, and beware!
In ambush his nets he carefully brings,
Glad innocence feels no alarm;
Unguarded her flight—’midst danger she wings—
And falls into sorrowful harm.
p. 20Alas! she is silent, and full of despair,
He glides away quick with his treasure so rare:
Think, girls, of the Nightingale’s fate, and beware! ”

“ The melody of the nightingale being universally admired, many lovers of birds have been induced to rob it of its liberty, in order to be possessed of its song in that dreary season, when it is absent from our climate. In a state of captivity, however, its notes are less pleasing, being neither so strong, so bold, nor harmonious. The bleakness of our winters chills its powers, and abates the energy of its vocal faculties; besides, it is of so delicate and tender a nature, that it cannot easily be kept alive in confinement, nor "brook the harsh confinement of the cage." ”

“ In daylight, when all the other birds are in active concert, the Nightingale only strikes you as the most active, emulous, and successful of the whole band. At night, especially if it is a calm one, with light enough to give you a wide indistinct view, the solitary music of this bird takes quite another character, from all the associations of the scene, from the languor one feels at the close of the day, and from the stillness of spirits and elevation of mind which comes upon one when walking out at that time. ”

“ It were then no sinning though I kissed her free.
[87]
TO THE NIGHTINGALE
Oh Nightingale, has that pale star heard you
Sobbing your passion into a song?
Has she deigned to stoop from her throne of splendour,
Deigned to pity your life's surrender,
Deigned to throw you a beam-smile tender,
You who have waited and loved so long?
Oh Nightingale, is your wondrous music
Cleaving the depths of the dark apart,
Born of a hope that is wearily dying? ”

“ I know you. I chased you from my kingdom, and you have given me life again! How can I reward you?’
‘You have done that already!’ said the Nightingale. ‘I brought tears to your eyes the first time I sang. I shall never forget that. They are jewels that rejoice a singer’s heart. But now sleep and get strong again; I will sing you a lullaby.’ And the Emperor fell into a deep, calm sleep as she sang.
The true Nightingale sings to the Emperor
The sun was shining through the window when he awoke, strong and well. ”

“ But the Nightingale was there, perched on the window-sill, singing divinely.
'Little Nightingale,' said the emperor tenderly, 'you must come and stay with me always. You shall sing only when you like; and, as to this toy bird here, I will smash it in a thousand bits.'
'Oh! you mustn't do that,' replied the real bird, 'it did its best, and, after all, it is a pretty thing. Keep it always by you. I can't come to live in the palace, but let me come whenever I like and sit in the tree outside your window and sing to you in the evening. ”

“ A flood of song wakes us at the earliest daylight; and the shy and solitary Veery, after the Vesper-Bird has concluded his evening hymn, pours his few pensive notes into the very bosom of twilight, and makes the hour sacred by his melody. But after twilight is sped, and the moon rises to shed her meek radiance over the sleeping earth, the Nightingale is not here to greet her rising, and to turn her melancholy beams into the cheerfulness of daylight. ”

“ The nightingale proposed the lark, the thrush, the blackbird and the bullfinch as experts in singing, and the frog proposed the starling, the linnet, the chaffinch and the reed-warbler.
The nightingale was overcome with emotion at the generosity of the frog, and insisted on adding the crow and the toad as experts in croaking.
The nightingale sang first, whilst his trade rivals sat and chattered. They chattered so loud that the nightingale stopped singing in a huff.
"You are hardly at your best, you know, old thing," said the linnet sympathetically. ”

“ The ear is enchanted by the wild and beautiful notes of multitudes of nightingales, whose warblings seem to increase in melody and softness with the unfolding of their favourite flowers. Here, indeed, the stranger is more powerfully reminded, that he is in the genuine country of the nightingale and the rose. ”

“ Then the artificial bird had to sing alone. It gave just as much pleasure as the real one, and then it was so much prettier to look at; it sparkled like bracelets and necklaces. Three-and-thirty times it sang the same piece without being tired. People would like to have heard it again, but the Emperor thought that the living Nightingale should sing now—but where was she? No one had noticed that she had flown out of the open window away to her green woods.
‘What shall we do!’ said the Emperor.
And all the Court scolded, and said that the Nightingale was very ungrateful. ”

“ BIRD RAPTURES. The sunrise wakes the lark to sing, The moonrise wakes the nightingale. Come darkness, moonrise, every thing That is so silent, sweet, and pale: Come, so ye wake the nightingale. Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon, Make haste to wake the nightingale: Let silence set the world in tune [264] To hearken to that wordless tale Which warbles from the nightingale O herald skylark, stay thy flight One moment, for a nightingale Floods us with sorrow and delight. To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail; Leave us to-night the nightingale. ”

“ For while of half the year Care him bereaves,
To damp the ardour of his speckled breast;
The nightingale to summer's life belongs,
And naked trees, and winter's nipping wrongs,
Are strangers to her music and her rest. ”

“ The Nightingale soon became the one absorbing fashion. The ladies, when any one spoke to them, took water in their mouths, raised their heads and gurgled, thinking to imitate its song. The lackeys and chamber-maids, who are always the most difficult people to please, freely admitted they had nothing whatever against the bird; while the people of the town could think of nothing else but this new wonder of the palace. ”

“ Then a nightingale began to sing; I could not see the bird, but only heard the lovely music gushing from amid the dim gloom of the leaves, filling the whole forest with exquisite strains. I understood the nightingale’s song just as well as I did that of the cricket, but what it sang was much more beautiful.
THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG.
The Day has furled
Her banners red,
And all the world
Lies cold and dead ”

“ As the evening came on, and the gnats played in the warm air and in the red clouds, the nightingale came and sang to the roses; sang that the beautiful is as the sunshine in this world, and that the beautiful lives for ever. But the roses thought that the nightingale sang his own praise, which one might very well have fancied; for that the song related to them, of that they never thought: they rejoiced in it, however, and meditated if perhaps all the little sparrows could become nightingales too. ”

“ Ode to a Nightingale.—Page 320.
Of the five odes of Keats, the Nightingale is perhaps the most perfect, and certainly the most imaginative. But the Grecian Urn is the finest, even though it has fancy rather than imagination, for never was fancy more exquisite. The most conspicuous idea—the emptying of the town because its folk are away at play in the tale of the antique urn—is merely a fancy, and a most antic fancy—a prank; it is an irony of man, a rallying of art, a mockery of time, a burlesque of poetry, divine with tenderness. ”

“ Yes, everything in the Emperor's garden was admirably arranged. And it extended so far that the gardener himself did not know where the end was. If a man went on and on, he came into a glorious forest with high trees and deep lakes. The wood extended straight down to the sea, which was blue and deep; great ships could sail, too, beneath the branches of the trees; and in the trees lived a Nightingale, which sang so splendidly that even the poor fisherman, who had many other things to do, stopped still and listened, when he had gone out at night to throw out his nets, and heard the Nightingale. ”

“ She knew all about it. 'Oh yes; the delightful Nightingale!' she cried. 'Of course I know it. Every evening I hear it sing in the wood by the seashore on my way home. Ah me! its music brings tears into my eyes and makes me feel as if my mother is kissing me.'
'Listen, little kitchen-maid!' said the gentleman-in-waiting, 'if you will lead us to the Nightingale I will give you permission to see the emperor dining to-night.'
She clapped her hands with glee at this, and very soon they were all following her on the way to the wood. As they ran a cow began to bellow loudly, and they stopped. ”

“ The young Student was still lying on the grass, where she had left him, and the tears were not yet dry in his beautiful eyes.
“Be happy,” cried the Nightingale, “be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. Flame-colored are his wings, and colored like flame is his body. ”

“ I have never heard the Nightingale; but if I may judge from descriptions of its song, and from the notes of those Canaries which are said to give us perfect imitations of it, we have no bird in America that equals this classical songster. The following description, by Pliny, which is said to be superior to any other, may afford us some idea of the extent of its powers:—"The Nightingale, that for fifteen days and nights, hid in the thickest shades, continues her note without intermission, deserves our attention and wonder. How surprising that so great a voice can reside in so small a body! ”

“ The Nightingale and the Glow-worm.
"The Nightingale," by William Cowper (1731-1800) , is a favorite with a teacher of good taste, and I include it at her request.
A nightingale, that all day long
Had cheered the village with his song,
Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
Nor yet when eventide was ended,
Began to feel, as well he might,
The keen demands of appetite:
When, looking eagerly around,
He spied far off, upon the ground,
A something shining in the dark,
And knew the glow-worm by his spark ”

“ IT has been asserted by many reputable naturalists, both ancient and modern, that the nightingale never sings near its nest, for fear of its being discovered by that means; but I will beg leave to affirm from a long course of observation and experience in ornithology, (which indeed for many years past has been my chief study, [2] and principal amusement) that it always sits and sings not far from the spot where all its affections are centered ”

“ The haunts of the nightingale are chiefly thick hedges, low coppices, and bushes, especially where there are little rivulets, brooks, or streams of water near them: it also delights in solitary groves, sequestered meadows, shady places, and the most retired situations. ”

“ In the Nightingale the tragedy of this life made him long to escape, on the wings of imagination, to the ideal world of beauty symbolized by the song of the bird. Here finding all real things, even the most beautiful, pall upon him, he extols the fancy, which can escape from reality and is not tied by place or season in its search for new joys. This is, of course, only a passing mood, as the extempore character of the poetry indicates. We see more of settled conviction in the deeply-meditative Ode to Autumn, where he finds the ideal in the rich and ever-changing real. ”

“ The Nightingale in the Foot of the Hawk, is the Case of many an Innocent Creature in the Hands of Justice, when the very Equity of the Law Bends under the Weight of an Over-ruling Rigour. The Belly has no Ears, and so there’s no Charming of it. Arguments against Power, are but Wind, when Reason draws One way, and Appetite Another. ”

“ The so-called “Virginian nightingale” is a species of grosbeak (q.v.) ; the “Pekin nightingale” or “Japanese nightingale” is a small babbler (Liothrix luteus) inhabiting the Himalayas and China, not Japan at all.
The nightingale holds a place in classical mythology. Procne and Philomela were the daughters of Pandion, king of Attica, who in return for warlike aid rendered him by Tereus, king of Daulis in T hrace, gave him the first-named in marriage. Tereus, however, being enamoured of her sister, feigned that his wife was dead, and induced Philomela to take her place. ”

“ Was The Nightingale published with a frontispiece? My copy is mutilated, but has belonged to some person who valued it much more highly than I do, as he has neatly repaired and replaced torn leaves and noted deficiencies. Prefixed is a mounted engraving of a bird in the act of singing, which, if intended for a nightingale, is really curious; as it is of the size and shape of a pheasant, with corvine legs and beak, and a wattle round the eye like that of a barb pigeon. ”

“ Attractive Qualities.—The first good quality of a nightingale is undoubtedly its fine voice, and notes which I shall endeavour to describe. The nightingale expresses his different emotions by suitable and particular tones. The most unmeaning cry when he is alone appears to be a simple whistle fitt, but if the syllable crr is added, it is then the call of the male to the female. ”