Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown.
Soft as Memnon's harp at morning,
To the inward ear devout,
Touched by light, with heavenly warning
Your transporting chords ring out.
Every leaf in every nook,
Every wave in every brook,
Chanting with a solemn voice
Minds us of our better choice.
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep.
What bird so sings, yet does so wail?
O, 'tis the ravish'd nightingale—
Jug, jug, jug, jug—tereu—she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among,
I woo, to hear thy even-song.
nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still;
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love.
| author = Milton
| work = Sonnet. To the Nightingale.
| place =
| note =
| topic = Nightingale
| page = 558
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem> said to the Nightingale:
"Hail, all hail!
Pierce with thy trill the dark,
Like a glittering music-spark,
When the earth grows pale and dumb."
D. M. Mulock-—A Rhyme About Birds.
Yon nightingale, whose strain so sweetly flows,
Mourning her ravish'd young or much-loved mate,
A soothing charm o'er all the valleys throws
And skies, with notes well tuned to her sad state.
Petrarch—To Laura in Death. Sonnet XLIII.
The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come, darkness, moonrise, everything
That is so silent, sweet, and pale:
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.
Christina G. Rossetti—Bird Raptures.
Hark! that's the nightingale,
Telling the self-same tale
Her song told when this ancient earth was young :
So echoes answered when her song was sung
In the first wooded vale.
Christina G. Rossetti—Twilight Calm. St. 7.
The angel of spring, the mellow-throated '
nightingale.
Sappho. Fragm. 39.
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise, and true perfection!
Merchant of Venice. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 104.
Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That piere'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
O Nightingale,
Cease from thy enamoured tale.
Shelley—Scenes from "Magico Prodigioso."
Sc.3.
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody.
Shelley—Woodman and the Nightingale.
The nightingale as soon as April bringeth
Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,
While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth,
Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making.
And mournfully bewailing,
Her throat in tunes expresseth
What grief her breast oppresseth.
Where beneath the ivy shade,
In the dew-besprinkled glade,
Many a love-lorn nightingale,
Warbles sweet her plaintive tale.
Lend me your song, ye Nightingales! O, pour
The mazy-running soul of melody
Into my varied verse.
Thomson—The Seasons. Spring. L. 574.
