THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 231 



perhaps, yet there may be something of both in it 

 — an inherited memory and the unrest and passion 

 of migration, the imperishable and overmastering 

 ache and desire which will in due time bring him 

 safely back through innumerable dangers over that 

 immense distance of barren deserts and of forests, of 

 mountain and seas, and savage and civilised lands. 



It is not strange to find that down to the age of 

 science, when the human mind had grown accustomed 

 to look for the explanation of all phenomena in 

 matter itself, an exception was made of the annual 

 migration of birds, and the belief remained (even in 

 Sir Isaac Newton's mind) that the impelling and 

 guiding force was a supernatural one. The ancients 

 did not know what became of their nightingale when 

 he left them, for in Greece, too, he is a strict migrant, 

 but his reappearance year after year, at the identical 

 spot, was itself a marvel and mystery, as it still is, 

 and they came inevitably to think it was the same 

 bird which they listened to. We have it in the epitaph 

 of Callimachus, in Cory's translation: 



They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead; 



They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed ; 



I wept when I remembered how often you and I 



Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. 



And now that you are lying, my dear old Carian guest, 



A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest. 



Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake, 



For Death he taketh all away, but these he cannot take. 



It is possible to read the thought in the original 

 differently, that immortality is given to the song, not 

 the bird. As one of my friends who have made literal 



