THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 235 



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 re- 

 mote 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 instrumental 



