And what does the hen nightingale think of it all, as she mildly sits upon the eggs and hears milord giving himself forth· Probably she likes it for she goes on breeding him as jaunty as ever. Probably she prefers his high cockalorum to the poet’s humble moan:
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain—
That wouldn’t be much use to the hen nightingale. And one sympathises with Keats’s Fanny, and understands why she wasn’t having any. Much good such a midnight would have been to her! Perhaps, when all’s said and done, the female of the species gets more out of life when the male isn’t wanting to cease upon the midnight, with or without pain. There are better uses for midnights. And a bird that sings because he’s full of his own bright life, and leaves her to keep the eggs cosy, is perhaps preferable to one who moans, even with love of her.
Of course, the nightingale is utterly unconscious of the little dim hen while he sings. And he never mentions her name. But she knows well enough that the song is half her; just as she knows the eggs are half him. And just as she doesn’t want him coming in and putting a heavy foot down on her little bunch of eggs, he doesn’t want her poking into his song, and fussing over it, and mussing it up. Every man to his trade, and every woman to hers.
Adieu! Adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades—
It never was a plaintive anthem, it was Caruso at his jauntiest. But don’t try to argue with a poet.
