103 A MIDLAND VILLAGE: RAILWAY AND WOODLAND. 



and Wordsworth, as he tells us in the next stanza, found the 

 cooing of the stock-dove more agreeable to his pensive mind. 

 I never yet heard a Nightingale singing dolefully, as the poets 

 will have it sing ; its varied phrases are all given out con brio, 

 and even that marvellous crescendo on a single note, which 

 no other bird attempts, conveys to the mind of the listener 

 the fiery intensity of the high-strung singer. It is a pity to 

 compare the songs of birds ; our best singers, thrush, blackbird, 

 blackcap, robin, and garden-warbler, all have a vocal beauty 

 of their own ; but it may safely be said that none approaches 

 the Nightingale in fire and fervour of song, or in the com- 

 bination of extraordinary power with variety of phrase. He 

 seems to do what he pleases with his voice, yet never to play 

 with it ; so earnest is he in every utterance — and these come 

 at intervals, sometimes even a long silence making the per- 

 formance still more mysterious — that if I were asked how to 

 distinguish his song from the rest, I should be inclined to tell 

 my questioner to wait by a wood side till he is fairly startled 

 by a bird that puts his whole ardent soul into his song. But 

 if he will have a description, let him go to old Pliny's tenth 

 book, or rather to Philemon Holland's translation of it, which 

 is much better reading than the original ; and there he will 

 find the most enthusiastic of the many futile attempts to 

 describe the indescribable. 



The Nightingale's voice is heard no more after mid-June ; 

 and from this time onwards the woods begin to grow silent, 

 especially after early morning. For a while the Blackcap 

 breaks the stillness, and his soft sweet warble is in perfect 



