Ἦρος ἄγγελος ἰμερόφωνος ἀήδων.
Spring's messenger, the sweet-voiced nightingale.
The dear good angel of the spring,
The nightingale.
Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, Act ii.
The tawny sweetwinged thing
Whose cry was but of Spring.
Swinburne, Songs of the Springtides, p. 52.
Quoted by the Scholiast on Sophocles, Electra, 149, 'the nightingale is the messenger of Zeus, because it is the sign of Spring.'
40