288 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



That crowds and hurries and precipitates 



With fast thick warble his delicious notes, 



As he were fearful that an April night 



Would be too short for him to utter forth 



His love chaunt, and disburthen his full soul 



Of all its music! * * * 



* * * Far and near 



In wood and thicket over the wide grove 



They answer and provoke each other's songs, 



With skirmish and capricious passagings, 



And murmurs musical, and swift jug, jug, 



And one low piping sound more sweet than all, 



Stirring the air with such an harmony, 



That should you close your eyes you might almost 



Forget it was not day*." 



Chaucer, too, in his poem of the Flower and Leaf, 

 says 



" The nightingale with so mery a note 

 Answered him, that all the wood yrong, &c." 



But it may be doubted if the epithet merry here 

 is to be taken exactly in the modern sense, any more 

 than it is in the old expression " My merry men," 

 in the address of a chief to his followers, or in the 

 common phrase Merry England, where it appears to 

 mean rather renowned or famous, than that we now 

 call merry. Dryden, in his paraphrase of the Flower 

 and Leaf, renders the above lines ; 



" The nightingale replied; 

 So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung, 

 That the grove echoed and the valleys rung." 



Considering this song merely as a piece of music, 

 there can be no doubt that both the views that have 

 thus been taken of it by the poets may be sup- 

 ported, though the following description, by the 

 Abbe La Pluche, is nearer the truth than either. 

 " The nightingale," he says, " passes from grave to 

 gay ; from a simple song to a warble the most varied ; 

 * The Nightingale, written in April 1798. 



