C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Nightingale
The nightingale is sovereign of song.
The nightingale, their only vesper-bell, sung sweetly to the rose the day’s farewell.
The love-lorn nightingale nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.
Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy!
It was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.
’Tis the merry nightingale that crowds and hurries and precipitates, 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 disburden his full soul of all its music.
O nightingale, that on yon blooming spray warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,—thou with fresh hope the lover’s heart doth fill!
The nightingale, if she should sing by day, when every goose is cackling, would be thought no better a musician than the wren. How many things by season seasoned are to their right praise and true perfection!