THE NIGHTINGALE. 
677 
the power it exercises. The lovely strains of the 
“ Queen of the Night” are so indescribably full in tone, 
charming in grace and purity, and marvellous in their 
variety, power, and volume, as entirely to surpass those 
of any other bird: soft, flute-like strophes alternate 
with the loud and ringing, the plaintive with the gay, 
mingling together in one sublime and ever-varying 
succession; power is accompanied by grace and euphony, 
which are combined with fulness and purity; the whole 
forming a gift of melody unequalled for richness and the 
thousand and one various strophes with which it is 
adorned. Thus the song of the Nightingale is a well- 
known poem, yet ever new, one of which every stanza 
seems so beautiful in our ears as to obliterate all those 
that have gone before, so that the strain present to our 
ear rivets the soul, and still leaves us eager for what 
may follow. 
When the shades of night have fallen, and moon¬ 
beams silver every leaf and flower; when all other birds 
are wrapt in silent slumber, and no breath of air disturbs 
the stillness of the midnight hour, and the Nightingale 
fulfils the promise of her name; when no single note of 
her heaven-born melody escapes the eager, listening- 
ear;—then must every human heart bow down before 
the power which poetry exercises over its more material 
being; then is one forced to recognize that our beauteous 
earth, so railed at by the hyper-orthodox, is gifted with 
music and poetry from heaven above, for at such a 
moment all the brilliant beauty of the blissful month of 
May may be said to inundate the heart in one long, deep 
draught of pleasure. 
That such a song cannot be reproduced is patent to 
everyone who has ever heard a Nighingale sing; never- 
