A HUNT FOR THE NIGHTINGALE 111 



ing. Its start is a vivid flash of sound. On the 

 whole, a high-bred, courtly, chivalrous song; a 

 song for ladies to hear leaning from embowered 

 windows on moonlight nights; a song for royal 

 parks and groves, — and easeful but impassioned 

 life. We have no bird-voice so piercing and 

 loud, with such flexibility and compass, such full- 

 throated harmony and long-draAvn cadences; though 

 we have songs of more melody, tenderness, and 

 plaintiveness. None but the nightingale could have 

 inspired Keats's ode, — that longing for self-forget- 

 fulness and for the oblivion of the world, to escape 

 the fret and fever of life. 



"And with thee fade away into the forest dim." 



