232 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



translations for me has it: "Yet thy nightingale's 

 notes live, whereon Hades, ravisher of all things, 

 shall not lay a hand," or "But thy nightingales (or 

 nightingales' songs) live; over these Hades, the all- 

 destroyer, throws not a hand." 



Keats, too, plays with the thought in his famous 

 ode: 



Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird ! 



No hungry generations tread 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 alien corn; 

 The same that oft-times hath 

 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 

 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 



His imagination carries him too far, since the "self- 

 same song," or the song by the same bird, could never 

 be heard in more than one spot — at Hampstead, let 

 us say; for though he may travel far and spend six 

 months of every year in Abyssinia or some other 

 remote region, he sings at home only. Of all the 

 British poets who have attempted it, George Meredith 

 is greatest in describing the song which has so strong 

 an effect on us; but how much greater is Keats who 

 makes no such attempt, but in impassioned stanza 

 after stanza of the supremest beauty, renders its 

 effect on the soul. And so with prose descriptions; 

 we turn wearily from all such vain efforts to find an 

 ever-fresh pleasure in the familiar passage in Izaak 

 Walton, his simple expressions of delight in the singer 

 ''breathing such sweet loud music out of her little 



