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.
-Thomson: Spring.

(93) Poor captive bird! who from thy narrow cage
Pourest such music that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody:
This song shall be thy rose; its petals pale
Are dead indeed, my adored nightingale;
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High-winged heart! that dost for ever

(94)

Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought in which arrayed

It over-soared this low and worldly shade,

Lies shattered, and thy panting, wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unnatural nest.

I weep vain tears; blood would less bitter be,

Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.

I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song

All of its mortality and wrong,

With those clear drops which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping till sorrow becomes ecstasy;

Then smile on it so that it may not die.

-Shelley: Epipsychidion.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird.
No hungry generation treads thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown;
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in fairyland forlorn. -Keats: Ode.

(95)

(96)

(97)

(98)

(99)

(100)

The nightingale

Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale;
"Now drain the cup," said Lionel,

"Which the poet bird has crowned so well
With the wine of her bright and liquid song!
Heard'st thou not sweet words among
That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
Heard'st thou not that those who die
Awake in a world of ecstasy?

That love, when limbs are interwoven,

And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,

And thought to the worlds' dim boundaries clinging,
And music, when one beloved is singing,

Is death? Let us drain right joyously

The cup which the sweet bird fills for me."

Shelley: Rosalind and Helen.

Hopes long lost are singing

From thorns like nightingales.-Montgomery: Youth.

"Did you admire my lamp," quoth he,

"As much as I your minstrelsy,

You would abhor to do me wrong,
As much as I to spoil your song;
For 'twas the self-same Power Divine
Taught you to sing and me to shine,
That you with music, I with light,
Might beautify and cheer the night."
The songster heard his short oration,

And warbling out his approbation,

Released him.-Cowper: Nightingale and Glow-Worm.

Aske me no more where doth hast

The nightingale when May is past,
For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters and keeps warm her note.-Carew: Song.

The lone nightingale

Has answered me with her most soothing song

Out of her ivy bower, when I sat pale

With grief and sighed beneath.—Shelley: Revolt of Islam.

Philomel, though unadornt,

Needs not the aid of plumes.-Hurdis: Village Curate.

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(102)

(103)

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(105)

The sober-suited songstress.-Thomson: Summer.

Our songsters, too, say, can we breathe of them one slighting word?

Their plumage dazzles not, but yet can sweeter strains be
heard?

Let other feathers vaunt the dyes of deepest rainbow flush,
Give me old England's nightingale, its robin, and its thrush.
Cook: England.

For Nature's hand,

That with a sporting vanity has decked
The plumy nations, there her gayest hues
Profusely pours.
But if she bids them shine,

Arrayed in all the beauteous beams of day,
Yet frugal still, she humbles them in song;
Nor envy we the gaudy robes they lend
Proud Montague's realm, whose legions cast
A boundless radiance waking on the sun,
While Philomel is ours.-Thomson: Summer.

Lovers linger in the vale

While the twilight gathers round,
With a fear lest mortal ear

Should listen to the whispered sound.

They would have no peering eye

While they tell the secret tale;
Not a spy may venture nigh,
Save the gentle nightingale.
Perched upon the tree close by,
He may note each trembling sigh;
Springing on the nearest bough,
He may witness every vow.

Favoured bird! oh, thou hast heard

Many a soft and mystic word,

While the night-wind scarcely stirred,

And the stars were in the sky.-Cook: Birds.

As a vale is watered by a flood

Of the circumfluous waters, every sphere

And every flower, and beam, and cloud, and wave,

And every wind of the mute atmosphere;

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky,

(1)

(2)

Struggling with darkness; as a tube rose

Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness.
The folded roses and the violets pale
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets, the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth, the loneliness;
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle-ever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,
Itself how low, how high beyond all height,

The heaven where it would perish; and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm

Girt as with an interminable zone,

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion

Out of their dreams, harmony became love

In every soul but one.

-Shelley: Woodman and Nightingale.

NIGHT-JAR.

While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung,
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song.

-Gilbert White: Evening Waik.

By the lingering light I scarce discern

The shrieking night-jar sail on heavy wing.

-Charlotte Smith: Sunset.

(1)

NUT-HATCH.

Nut-hatch piercing with strong bill.-Southey: The Filbert.

ORTOLAN.

(1)

He wants no Cyprus birds, nor ortolans;

Nor dainties fetched from far to please his sense.

-Oldham: Paraphrase.

(2)

Nor ortolans, nor godwits, nor the rest

Of earthly names that glorify a feast.—Cowley: Translation.

OSPREY.

(1)

The fish-consuming osprey.-Quarles: History of Samson.

(2)

(3)

The ospray oft here seene, though seldom here it breeds;
Which over them the fish no sooner doe espie,
But (betwixt him and them by an antipathy),

Turning their bellies up, as though their death they saw,
They at his pleasure lye, to stuffe his glut'nous maw.

-Drayton: Polyolbion.

'Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,

Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons fly.

-Wordsworth: Descriptive Sketches.

Hawk and osprey screamed for joy.—Scott: Harold.

(4)

(5)

Soon as the sun, great ruler of the year,

Bends to our northern clime his bright career.

True to the season, o'er our sea-beat shore,
The sailing osprey high is seen to soar,
With broad unmoving wing, and circling slow,
Marks each loose straggler in the deep below;
Sweeps down like lightning; plunges with a roar,
And bears his struggling victim to the shore.

-A. Wilson: The Osprey.