'I have seen a nightingale On a sprig of thyme bewail, Seeing the dear nest that was Hers alone, borne off, alas! By a labourer: I heard, For this outrage, the poor bird Say a thousand mournful things To the wind, which on its wings From her to the guardian sky Bore her melancholy cry-- Bore her tender tears. She spake As if her fond heart would break. One while in a sad, sweet note, Gurgled from her straining throat, She enforced her piteous tale, Mournful prayer and plaintive wail; One while with the shrill dispute, Quite o'er-wearied, she was mute; Then afresh, for her dear brood, Her harmonious shrieks renewed; Now she winged it round and round, Now she skimmed along the ground; Now from bough to bough in haste The delighted robber chased; And alighting in his path, Seemed to say, 'twixt grief and wrath: "Give me back, fierce rustic rude! Give me back my pretty brood!" And I saw the rustic still Answer: "That I never will!"' Independently of the untruthfulness of which a naturalist would complain in this description--for no birds under such circumstances of distress sing, but merely repeat each its own peculiar piercing cry, never at any other time heard, and which cannot be mistaken--there is a palpable effort of ingenuity discoverable in the representation, which seems to tell us that the writer was making up a story, rather than uttering his own belief. It may even be doubted whether Virgil himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty. Why otherwise did he not simply and at once--as his masters Homer and Theocritus had done before him--describe her notes as mournful, instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for giving them that character? But however this may be, we cannot conceal from ourselves, that some stubborn passages still remain in the poets, proclaiming that there are men, and those among the greatest and most tasteful, to whose fancy the voice of the nightingale has sounded full of wo. Homer must be counted of this number--unless we think with Fox, in the preface to his _History of Lord Holland_, that it is only as to her wakefulness Penelope is compared to the night singing-bird; and so must Milton (for although Coleridge has satisfactorily dealt with the passage in _Il Penseroso_, the line of the Lady's song in _Comus_ remains still); and Shakspeare himself, who could scarcely be influenced, as Milton might very possibly be, by the opinions of the Grecian poets.