SONGS. 287 



have said, in representing the nightingale's song as 

 mournful and plaintive. Thus Sophocles, in his- 

 ' Ajax Flagellifer/ refers to it as an image of vocifer- 

 ous sorrow *, and in his ' Electra' he calls it the 

 " querulous nightingale." Petrarch again mentions 

 its " lamenting f," and Tasso its " deploring" (El* 

 usignuol che plord). These poets, no doubt, were 

 biassed by their classical recollections, since from 

 Homer and Hesiod to Virgil, Ovid, and down to 

 the " lamenting her hapless hymenaeals" (plorans 

 infelices hymen(Bos\) of Baptista, the Mantuan, most, 

 if not all, the poets of the south of Europe have sung 

 in the same strain, in which they have been followed 

 by those of our own country. Thomson, for in- 

 stance, has 



<( All abandon'd to despair, she sings 

 Her sorrows through the night." 



Coleridge, however, in some well-known lines on 

 this bird, has given a very different character of its 

 song ; exclaiming 



" A melancholy bird ? Oh ! idle thought- 

 In nature there is nothing melancholy. 



But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced 



With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, 



Or slow distemper, or neglected love, 



(And so, poor wretch ! fill'd all things with himself, 



And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale 



Of his own sorrow,) he, and such as he, 



First named these notes a melancholy strain, 



And many a poet echoes the conceit. 



We have learnt 



A different lore : we may not thus profane 



Nature's sweet voices, always full of love 



And joyance! 'Tis the merry nightingale 



* Ajax Flag. v. 630, *. r. X. 

 f E'l Roscignuol, che dolcemente al'ombra 

 Tutte le notti si lamenta, e piagne. 

 t 



