SONG.
Among the controversies of the day, not the least important is
that respecting the song of the Nightingale. It is debated whether
the notes of this bird are of a joyous or a melancholy expression.
He who has spoken so decisively of “the merry Nightingale,” must
forgive my somewhat unfilial inclination toward the elder and
more common opinion. No doubt the sensations of the bird while
singing are pleasurable, but the question is, What is the feeling
which its song, considered as a succession of sounds produced by an
instrument, is calculated to carry to a human listener. When we
speak of a pathetic strain of music, we do not mean that either the
fiddler or his fiddle are unhappy, but that the tones or intervals of
the air are such as the mind associates with tearful sympathies.
At the same time, I utterly deny that the voice of philomel expresses
present pain. I could never have imagined that the pretty creature
“sets her breast against a thorn;” and could not have perpetrated
the diabolical story of Tereus. In fact, nature is very little obliged
to the heathen mythology. The constant anthropomorphism of
the Greek religion sorely perplexed the ancient conceptions of
natural beauty. A river is turned into a god, who is still too much
of a river to be quite a god. It is a statue of ice in a continual
state of liquefaction.
'Tis sweet to hear the merry lark,
That bids a blithe good-morrow;
But sweeter to hark in the twinkling dark,
To the soothing song of sorrow.
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.
The merry lark, he soars on high,
No worldly thought o'ertakes him;
He sings aloud to the clear blue sky,
And the daylight that awakes him.
As sweet a lay, as loud, as gay,
The nightingale is trilling;
With feeling bliss, no less than his,
Her little heart is thrilling.
Yet ever and anon, a sigh,
Peers through her lavish mirth;
For the lark's bold song is of the sky,
And her's is of the earth.
By night and day, she tunes her lay,
To drive away all sorrow;
For bliss, alas! to night must pass,
And woe may come to-morrow.
