THE NIGHTINGALE. 
41 
To brook the harsh confinement of the cage. 
Oft when returning with a loaded bill 
Th’ astonished mother finds a vacant nest, 
By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns 
Robbed. To the ground the vain provision falls; 
Her pinions ruffle, and, low drooping, scarce 
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade, 
Where, all abandoned to despair, she sings 
Her sorrows through the night, and on the bough 
Sole-sitting, still at every dying fall 
Takes up again her lamentable strain 
Of winding woe, till wide around the woods 
Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.” 
Spring. 
Among modern poets, Coleridge and Tennyson ( The Vision of Sin ) have dwelt 
upon the Nightingale’s rapturous song. The latter has a novel image in “ Enoch 
Arden ” well worthy of quotation— 
“ Where a passion, yet unborn, perhaps, 
Lay hidden, as the music of the moon 
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the Nightingale.” 
Throughout all modern poetry two distinct views are taken of the Nightingale’s 
song one that it is a merry, joyous strain ; the other that it is a mournful melody. 
Partly their own idiosyncrasy, partly the fables of the ancients, have coloured men s 
minds herein. Milton, as might be expected, generally deems it a sad song. The 
Nightingale was his favourite bird, singing, like himself, in darkness, and “nightly 
singing her sad song well.’ A wonderful collection of poetic imagery may be made 
from the passages in which he dwells upon this bird, many of which are of un¬ 
rivalled sweetness and execution, and will gns the reader some idea of his learning 
and the prodigality of his poetic genius. The lark seems to have been Shake¬ 
speare’s favourite bird, and a theorist may easily see in this preference the character 
both of his temperament and his poetry. But we may be sure that as a Warwick¬ 
shire man he has not omitted the Nightingale from the long list of rustic birds and 
objects which appear in the plays. Juliet thus pleads with her lover 
“ It was the Nightingale, and not the lark, 
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. 
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree. 
Believe me, love, it was the Nightingale! ” 
and another lover says— 
Except I be by Sylvia in the night, 
There is no music in the Nightingale.” 
