‘Some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love
(And so, poor wretch, filled all things with himself,
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrow)—he, and such as he,
First named these sounds a melancholy strain,
And many a poet echoes the conceit.’
That the old Greek poets were right, and had some grounds for the myth of
Philomela, I do not dispute; though Sophocles, speaking of the
nightingales of Colonos, certainly does not represent them as lamenting.
The Elizabethan poets, however, when they talked of Philomel, ‘her breast
against a thorn,’ were unaware that they and the Greeks were talking of
two different birds; that our English Lusciola Luscinia is not Lusciola
Philomela, one of the various birds called Bulbul in the East. The true
Philomel hardly enters Venetia, hardly crosses the Swiss Alps, ventures
not into the Rhineland and Denmark, but penetrates (strangely enough)
further into South Sweden than our own Luscinia: ranging meanwhile over
all Central Europe, Persia, and the East, even to Egypt. Whether his
song be really sad, let those who have heard him say. But as for our own
Luscinia, who winters not in Egypt and Arabia, but in Morocco and
Algeria, the only note of his which can be mistaken for sorrow, is rather
one of too great joy; that cry, which is his highest feat of art; which
he cannot utter when he first comes to our shores, but practises
carefully, slowly, gradually, till he has it perfect by the beginning of
June; that cry, long, repeated, loudening and sharpening in the intensity
of rising passion, till it stops suddenly, exhausted at the point where
pleasure, from very keenness, turns to pain; and—
‘In the topmost height of joy
His passion clasps a secret grief.’
How different in character from his song is that of the gallant little
black-cap in the tree above him. A gentleman he is of a most ancient
house, perhaps the oldest of European singing birds. How perfect must
have been the special organization which has spread seemingly without
need of alteration or improvement, from Norway to the Cape of Good Hope,
from Japan to the Azores. How many ages must have passed since his
forefathers first got their black caps. And how intense and fruitful
must have been the original vitality which, after so many generations,
can still fill that little body with so strong a soul, and make him sing
as Milton’s new-created birds sang to Milton’s Eve in Milton’s Paradise.
Sweet he is, and various, rich, and strong, beyond all English warblers,
save the nightingale: but his speciality is his force, his rush, his
overflow, not so much of love as of happiness. The spirit carries him
away. He riots up and down the gamut till he cannot stop himself; his
notes tumble over each other; he chuckles, laughs, shrieks with delight,
throws back his head, droops his tail, sets up his back, and sings with
every fibre of his body: and yet he never forgets his good manners. He
is never coarse, never harsh, for a single note. Always graceful, always
sweet, he keeps perfect delicacy in his most utter carelessness.
And why should we overlook, common though he be, yon hedge-sparrow, who
is singing so modestly, and yet so firmly and so true? Or cock-robin
himself, who is here, as everywhere, honest, self-confident, and
cheerful? Most people are not aware, one sometimes fancies, how fine a
singer is cock-robin now in the spring-time, when his song is drowned by,
or at least confounded with, a dozen other songs. We know him and love
him best in winter, when he takes up (as he does sometimes in cold wet
summer days) that sudden wistful warble, struggling to be happy, half in
vain, which surely contradicts Coleridge’s verse:—
‘In Nature there is nothing melancholy.’
But he who will listen carefully to the robin’s breeding song on a bright
day in May, will agree, I think, that he is no mean musician; and that
for force, variety and character of melody, he is surpassed only by
black-cap, thrush, and nightingale.
And what is that song, sudden, loud, sweet, yet faltering, as if half
ashamed? Is it the willow wren or the garden warbler? The two birds,
though very remotely allied to each other, are so alike in voice, that it
is often difficult to distinguish them, unless we attend carefully to the
expression. For the garden warbler, beginning in high and loud notes,
runs down in cadence, lower and softer, till joy seems conquered by very
weariness; while the willow wren, with a sudden outbreak of cheerfulness,
though not quite sure (it is impossible to describe bird-songs without
attributing to the birds human passions and frailties) that he is not
doing a silly thing, struggles on to the end of his story with a
hesitating hilarity, in feeble imitation of the black-cap’s bacchanalian
dactyls.