124 THE NIGHTINGALE. 



miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the 

 very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very 

 often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising 

 and falling, the doubling and redoubling, of her voice, 

 might well be lifted above earth and say, Lord, what 

 music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when 

 thou affordest bad men such music on earth?" To "sing 

 like a nightingale " has passed into a proverb. 



" She sings as sweetly as any nightingale." 



Taming of the Shrew, Act ii. Sc. i. 



In Gardiner's " Music of Nature," the following passage 

 is given from the song of the Nightingale : 



Although the male bird only is the songster, yet we 

 talk of her singing : 



" It was the nightingale, and not the lark, 

 That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear ; 

 Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree ;* 

 Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. 



Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 5. 



The origin of this change of sex is to be found, no 



* According to Steevens, this is not merely a poetical supposition. "It is ob- 

 served," he says, "of the nightingale that, if undisturbed, she sits and sings upon 

 the same treefor many weeks together ; " and Russell, in his "Account of Aleppo," 

 tells us " the nightingale sings from the pomegranate groves in the day-time." 



