How astonished the nightingale would be if he could be made to realise what sort of answer the poet was answering to his song! He would fall off the bough with amazement.
Because a nightingale, when you answer him back, only shouts and sings louder. Suppose a few other nightingales pipe up in neighbouring bushes—as they always do—then the blue-white sparks of sound go dazzling up to heaven. And suppose you, mere mortal, happen to be sitting on the shady bank having an altercation with the mistress of your heart, hammer and tongues, then the chief nightingale swells and goes at it like Caruso in the third act, simply a brilliant, bursting frenzy of music, singing you down: till you simply can’t hear yourself speak to quarrel.
There was, in fact, something very like a nightingale in Caruso, that bird-like bursting miraculous energy of song, and fullness of himself, and self-luxuriance.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
Not yet in Tuscany, anyhow. They are twenty to the dozen. Whereas the cuckoo seems remote and low-voiced, calling his low, half-secretive call as he flies past—Perhaps it really is different in England.
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn—
And why in tears· Always tears. Did Diocletian, I wonder, among the emperors, burst into tears when he heard the nightingale, and Aesop among the clowns· And Ruth, really· Myself, I strongly suspect that young lady of setting the nightingale singing, like the nice damsel in Boccaccio’s story, who went to sleep with the lively bird in her hand: “tua figliuola è stata si vaga dell’usignuolo, ch’ella l’ha preso e tienlosi in mano. ”
