NIGHTINGALE

Related Subject: Birds

1. A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy
   

2. Oh nightingale! What doth she ail?
   And is she sad or jolly?
   For ne'er on earth was sound of mirth
   So like to melancholy.—HARTLEY COLERIDGE, Song
   

3. The nightingale among the thick-leaved spring
   That sits alone in sorrow, and doth sing
   Whole nights away in mourning.—JOHN FLETCHER, The Faithful Shepherdess
   

4. 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:
   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
   Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
   Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.—KEATS, Ode to a Nightingale
   

5. All but the wakeful nightingale;
   She all night long her amorous descant sung.—MILTON, Paradise Lost
   

6. Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day.—MILTON, To the Nightingale
   

7. There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream
   And the nightingale sings round it all day long.—THOMAS MOORE, Lalla Rookh
   

8. The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
   Ah whence and whither flown again, who knows!—OMAR KHAYYAM, Rubaiyat
   

9. 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!—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
   

10. It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
    That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
    Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.—SHAKESPEARE,Romeo and Juliet