When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.”
But although she is usually supposed to withhold her notes until sunset, and then to be the only songstress left, she in reality sings in the day often as sweetly and as powerfully as at night, but, amidst the general chorus of other birds, her efforts are less noticed.[71] Valentine declares that—
“Except I be by Sylvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale.”
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. 1.
And later on—
“How use doth breed a habit in a man!
This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns: