128 SINGING BY DAY AND NIGHT. 



There is no doubt that one great charm in the song of 

 the nightingale is, that it is heard oftenest at eve, when 

 nearly every other bird is hushed and gone to roost. We 

 are thus enabled to pay more attention to it, and hear 

 the entire song. This evidently was Milton's idea when he 

 wrote, in " II Penseroso :" — 



" Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, 

 Most musical, most melancholy ! 

 Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, 

 I woo, to hear thy evening song." 

 Portia says, in The Merchant of Venice, Act v. Sc. i, — 



" I think, 

 The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 

 When every goose is cackling, would be thought 

 No better a musician than the wren." 

 But although she is usually supposed to withhold her 

 notes until sunset, and then to be the only songstress left, 

 she in reality sings in the day often as sweetly and as 

 powerfully as at night, but, amidst the general chorus of 

 other birds, her efforts are less noticed.* Valentine 

 declares that — 



'' Except I be by Sylvia in the night, 

 There is no music in the nightingale." 



Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. I. 



* Not only does the nightingale sing by day, but she is by no means the only 

 bird which sings at night. We have frequently listened with delight to the wood 

 lark, skylark, thrush, sedge-warbler and grasshopper-warbler long after sunset, 

 and we have heard the cuckoo and corncrake at midnight. 



