The Nightingale
Milton’s exquisite sonnet to the nightingale makes pointed reference to the fancy that her song portended success in love. Faber, in the “Cherwell Water Lily,” gives an angelic character to the strains of the nightingale. The classical fable of the unhappy Philomela may have given origin to the conception that the nightingale sings with its breast impaled upon a thorn. The earliest notice of this myth by an English poet is, probably, that in the “Passionate Pilgrim” of Shakespeare—
“Everything doth banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean’d her breast up till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.”