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I have head the nightingale herself.
Author: Agesilaus, the Great
Source: when asked to listed to a man imitate the nightingale, see Plutarch's "Life of Agesilaus"
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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!
Author: Matthew Arnold
Source: Philomela (l. 32)
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For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed,
So poets live upon the living light.
Author: Philip James Bailey
Source: Festus (sc. Home)
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As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made.
Author: Richard Barnfield
Source: Address to the Nightingale
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It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word;
And gentle winds, and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure.
Which follows the decline of day,
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Parisina (st. 1)
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"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source: The Nightingale
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'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!
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source: The Nightingale (l.43)
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Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours,
Of winter's past or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers.
Author: William Drummond (1)
Source: Sonnet--To a Nightingale
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Like a wedding-song all-melting
Sings the nightingale, the dear one.
Author: Heinrich Heine
Source: Book of Songs--Donna Clara
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The nightingale appear'd the first,
And as her melody she sang,
The apple into blossom burst,
To life the grass and violets sprang.
Author: Heinrich Heine
Source: Book of Songs--New Spring (no. 9)
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Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth.
Author: John Keats
Source: Ode--Bards of Passion and of Mirth
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Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?
Author: John Keats
Source: To a Nightingale
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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.
Author: John Keats
Source: To a Nightingale
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Soft as Memnon's harp at morning,
To the inward ear devout,
Touched by light, with heavenly warning
Your transporting chords ring out.
Every leaf in every nook,
Every wave in every brook,
Chanting with a solemn voice
Minds us of our better choice.
Author: John Keble
Source: The Nightingale
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To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep.
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: Keats
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What bird so sings, yet does so wail?
O, 'tis the ravish'd nightingale--
Jug, jug, jug, jug--tereu, she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Author: John Lyly (Lylie or Lyllie)
Source: The Songs of Birds
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Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among,
I woo, to hear thy even-song.
Author: John Milton
Source: Il Penseroso (l. 61)
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O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still;
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Author: John Milton
Source: Sonnet--To the Nightingale
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Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love.
Author: John Milton
Source: Sonnet--To the Nightingale
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I said to the Nightingale:
"Hail, all hail!
Pierce with thy trill the dark,
Like a glittering music-spark,
When the earth grows pale and dumb."
Author: Dinah Maria Mulock (used pseudonym Mrs. Craik)
Source: A Rhyme About Birds
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Yon nightingale, whose strain so sweetly flows,
Mourning her ravish'd young or much-loved mate,
A soothing charm o'er all the valleys throws
And skies, with notes well tuned to her and state.
Author: Francesco Petrarch
Source: To Laura in Death (sonnet XLIII)
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The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come, darkness, moonrise, everything
That is so silent, sweet, and pale:
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.
Author: Christina G. Rossetti
Source: Bird Raptures
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Hark! that's the nightingale,
Telling the self-same tale
Her song told when this ancient earth was young:
So echoes answered when her song was sung
In the first wooded vale.
Author: Christina G. Rossetti
Source: Twilight Calm (st. 7)
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The angel of spring, the mellow-throated nightingale.
Author: Christina G. Rossetti
Source: Twilight Calm (st. 7)
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The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
When neither is attended; and I think
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 thing by season seasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Merchant of Venice (Portia at V, i)
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