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!"
The fable of the nightingale's origin would, of course, in classical times, give the character of melancholy to its song; and it is rather remarkable that Æschylus makes Cassandra speak of the happy chirp of the nightingale, and the Chorus to remark upon this as a further proof of her insanity. (Shakspeare makes Edgar say, "The foul fiend haunted poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale."—King Lear, Act III. Sc. 6.)
Tennyson seems to be almost the only poet who has thoroughly recognised the great variety of epithets that may be applied to the nightingale's song, through the very opposite feelings which it seems to possess the power to awaken. In his Recollections of the Arabian Nights, he says,—
"The living airs of middle night
Died round the Bulbul as he sung;
Not he; but something which possess'd