I have head the nightingale herself.

To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said: "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."

'Tis the merry nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music!

"Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy.

For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light.

Hark! ah, the nightingale-- The tawny-throated! Hark from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark!--what pain! . . . . Again--thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!