The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire.
Shelley (Hellas).
Vox, et praeterea nihil.
[Words (literally voice) and nothing more.]
Proverb.
Plutarch, in his Apophthegm, Lacon. Incert. XIII, says that a man after plucking a nightingale and finding little flesh on it, said φωνὰ τύ τις ἐσσὶ, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο, “Thou art voice and nothing more” (King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations). No doubt this was the origin of the saying. It was applied to the nightingale, and to Echo—and then used in Hamlet’s sense, “Words, words, words.”