234 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



desire which will in due time bring him safely back 

 through innumerable dangers over that immense dis- 

 tance 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 re- 

 appearance 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 Calli- 

 machus, 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 

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

 live, whereon Hades, ravisher of all things, shall not 



