"Nightingale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evening with an old family friend in the Haymarket, a picture-restorer, whose shop and studio were next door to the old Hay-market Theatre. My host told me that at the very last appearance of Madame Goldschmit (Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale), he had sat at his open window, and had heard her sing as clearly as if he had been one of a paying audience who spent anything from a hundred pounds to a guinea to enjoy that privilege; and I can well believe him, because I heard easily the quaint chuckle of old Buckstone's ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... that surrounded her. It was impossible to look upon her without feeling the truth, that if God closes with Bastile bars one avenue of the senses, He opens another with widening gates "on golden hinges moving." Alice trembled with ecstacy at her own exquisite melody, like the nightingale whose soft plumage quivers on its breast as it sings. She would raise her sightless eyes to Heaven, following the upward strain with feelings of the most intense devotion. She called music the wind of the soul, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... studio gate of Chios, the nightingale sang to its mate, but a chill of horror shook her soul, for well she ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... were those! Like the nightingale's notes, when the fragrance of the rose intoxicates her yearning young heart with desire, they floated in the twilight. Oh, what melting, languid delight was that! The sounds kissed each other, then fled away pouting, and then, laughing, clasped each other and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... variation of the atmosphere affects him, though by no means uniformly; and so sensitive is he, that, when connected with you by any intimate rapport, even if but momentary, he almost divines your thoughts. He is full of perpetual surprises. I am sure he was a nightingale before he was Rose. An iridescence like sea-foam sparkled in him that evening, he laughed as lightly as the little tinkling mass-bells at every moment, and seemed to diffuse a rosy glow wherever he went in the room. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... is an ample variety of tenacious womanly characters between the extremes marked by Miriam beating her timbrels, and Cleopatra applying the asp; Cornelia, caring for nothing but her Roman jewels; Guyon, rapt in God; Lucrezia Borgia raging with bowl and dagger, and Florence Nightingale sweetening the memory of the Crimean war with ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... them. Believe me, ladies, you will find In that sweet light more solid joys, More true contentment to the mind Than all town-toys. Nor Cupid there less blood doth spill, But heads his shafts with chaster love, Not feather'd with a sparrow's quill, But of a dove. There you shall hear the nightingale, The harmless syren of the wood, How prettily she tells a tale Of rape and blood. The lyric lark, with all beside Of Nature's feather'd quire, and all The commonwealth of flowers in 'ts pride Behold you shall. The lily queen, the royal rose, The gilly-flower, prince ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... can learn everything useful in our village school. I am taught to fear God, to honor my parents, and to imitate their virtues. I don't wish to learn anything beyond that. Then your musicians, which you tell about, do they sing any better than the nightingale or the golden robin? Then we have our concerts and our fetes. We are right down happy when we are all together on Sunday evening under the trees. My sister sings, while I accompany her upon my flute. Our chants can be heard a long way ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... it. There was something in the air that stirred them to a vague restlessness and uneasiness, and our own particular Porky sat up in the top of a tall hemlock and sang. Not like Jenny Lind, nor like a thrush or a nightingale, but his harsh voice went squealing up and down the scale in a way that was all his own, without time or rhythm or melody, in the wildest, strangest music that ever woke the silent woods. I don't believe that he himself quite knew what he meant or why he ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... of the Persian nightingale to the Persian rose, "wine, wine, wine," was the cry to which hearts responded most readily in all the Georgian era. Walpole the father made Walpole the son drink too much, that he might not be unfilially sober while his father was unpaternally drunk. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sq km note: includes Saint Helena Island, Ascension, and the island group of Tristan da Cunha, which consists of Tristan da Cunha Island, Gough Island, Inaccessible Island, and the three Nightingale Islands water: 0 sq km land: ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... beloved by one who was absent; how in all difficulties or dangers the thought of her would be a polar star, high up in the heavens, and so on, and so on; for with all a lover's quickness of imagination and triteness of fancy, he called her a star, a flower, a nymph, a witch, an angel, or a mermaid, a nightingale, a siren, as one or another of her attributes ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school, The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind,— These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made. —Goldsmith. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... was filled with floating shadows, which seemed to glide into it from the dark recesses of the near woods, and in a copse some distance away a nightingale was singing to his mate, and filling the silence with melody. The notes fluted sweetly through the still air, mingling with the sigh of the rising wind and the musical splashing of the fountain. This shot up a pillar of silvery water ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... forest, he saw a dead nightingale. He left the deer's body and entered the bird's. Now he was safe, so he flew to his palace. He sang so sweetly, that the queen ordered her attendants to catch him. He gladly allowed himself to be caught, and ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... will make another tongue arise As lofty and more sweet, in which expressed The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs, Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realise a Poet's proudest dream, And make thee Europe's Nightingale of Song;[295] So that all present speech to thine shall seem 30 The note of meaner birds, and every tongue Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.[bz] This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan bard, the banished Ghibelline. Woe! woe! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... morning to night. At last the old gentleman, lying bedridden in the same room with the old lady, cries out in the old patter, fluent, after having been silent for two days and nights: "Now here, my jolly companions every one,—which the Nightingale club in a village was held, At the sign of the Cabbage and Shears, Where the singers no doubt would have greatly excelled, But for want of taste, voices and ears,—now, here, my jolly companions, every one, is a working model ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... inexpressible! The return of spring seemed to me like rising from the grave into paradise. The snow was hardly off the ground when we left our dungeon and returned to Charmettes, to enjoy the first warblings of the nightingale. I now thought no more of dying, and it is really singular, that from this time I never experienced any dangerous illness in the country. I have suffered greatly, but never kept my bed, and have often said to those about me, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... stillness that followed we became aware of the gathering dusk. The first stars were appearing, and the young moon was low in the west. From the shadow below we heard the murmur of a fountain, and the call of a nightingale sounded in the wood. Something in the time and the place must have worked on Mendoza's mood; for when he resumed it was ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... under the inky cloak of night during the toiling ascent. The scenery was lovely, sometimes grand, often fantastic; and for the first time we heard the clear ringing notes of the little Japanese nightingale. Watching the exquisitely feathered bamboos in green clusters, camellias on trees thirty feet high, the tall, slim, but graceful pines, the rocks fringed with lichens and mosses, mingled with the rarest of ferns, fresh and bright after the rain, kept the eye busy with delight. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... had been his companions for the time—the little Cockney with his incessant exuberance; the French-Canadian, picturesque of language and imagination; the one remaining Australian, vigorous of thought and forceful of temperament; the nurse, carrying Florence Nightingale's lamp through the blackness of war. He tried to say a little of what was bursting for utterance, but they only laughed and fenced it off. They wished him 'Cheerio—good-bye—good luck;' and he wondered if the whole realm of lived or written drama held any farewell more sublimely expressive ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... 410 sq km land area: 410 sq km comparative area: nearly two times the size of Washington, DC note: includes Ascension, Gough Island, Inaccessible Island, Nightingale ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... bathed in one of those deep dark pools at the edge of the river. I have been there constantly for several months, but last night a strange thing happened. I was taking my last plunge, when I heard—sometimes from one side, and sometimes from another—the sound of a voice singing more sweetly than any nightingale, though I could not catch any words. I left the pool, and, dressing myself as fast as I could, I searched every bush and tree round the water, as I fancied that perhaps it was my friend who was playing a trick on me, but there was not a creature to be seen; and when I reached home ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... I could not plain my woes to the moon? Why not I as well as another? I could roar you as 'twere any nightingale." ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... looked down to the nineteenth century with clairvoyant vision and beheld the good works of a Lucretia Mott, a Florence Nightingale, a Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton, not to mention a host of faithful mothers, he might, perhaps, have been less anxious about the apparel and the manners of his converts. Could he have foreseen a Margaret Fuller, a Maria Mitchell, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the mouth that she had felt on the way up. Speechless and motionless, the pair seemed so much a part of the tomb, that a little brown, bird came hopping in to shake its feathers and pick a worm between the slabs. 'It's a nightingale,' murmured Paul in the sweet overpowering stillness. She tried to say, 'Do they sing still in this month?' But he had taken her in his arms, he had set her between his knees at the edge of the granite couch, and putting her head back, pressed ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... breathing, Nightingale's long trill, Silver moonlight and the rocking Of the dreaming rill; Nightly light and nightly shadow, Shadow's endless lace— Neath the moon's enchanted changes The Beloved's face. Blinking stars as flash of amber, Snowy clouds on-rush, Tears and happiness ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... "Poor simpleton! she cannot help imitating all she sees us do; yet, would you believe it, she really has starts of common sense, and some tolerable ideas of her own. Spoiled by bad company! In the language of the bird-fanciers, she has a few notes nightingale, and all the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... silence. And the scent of mignonette and roses blew in upon her, and the twilight deepened, and I saw her grow pale with pleasure when the nightingale began to sing—and then I stole away and never was missed. She would lie in a long chair for hours like that, scarcely moving, and never speaking. At first I used to wonder what she thought about; but afterwards I knew that at such times she did ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... station for the US. In 1982, Ascension was an essential staging area for British forces during the Falklands War, and it remains a critical refueling point in the air-bridge from the UK to the South Atlantic. Tristan da Cunha: The island group consists of the islands of Tristan da Cunha, Nightingale, Inaccessible, and Gough. Tristan da Cunha is named after its Portuguese discoverer (1506); it was garrisoned by the British in 1816 to prevent any attempt to rescue Napoleon from Saint Helena. Gough and Inaccessible Islands have been designated World Heritage Sites. South Africa leases a site ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... materials more durable than those of bronze and marble, of ivory and gold. In the majestic harmony, the symmetrical grace of Sophocles, we survey the true portraiture of the genius of the times, and the old man of Coloneus still celebrates the name of Athens in a sweeter song than that of the nightingale [379], and melodies that have survived the muses of Cephisus [380]. Sophocles was allegorically the prophet when he declared that in the grave of Oedipus was to be found the sacred guardian and the everlasting defence ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... night, without ever perceiving that I was tired. At last I found it out. I lay down luxuriously on the shelf of a niche or false doorway made in the wall of the terrace; the canopy of my bed was formed by overarching tree-tops; a nightingale was perched exactly over my head, and I fell asleep to his singing. My slumber was delicious, my awaking more delicious still. It was broad day, and my opening eyes looked on sun and water and green things, and an adorable landscape. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... moment, until the welcome end of that sad life, Ichabod would patiently endure no tendance but Faith's; and she, with the calm and silent self-abnegation of her order, (for Florence Nightingale is but a type, and there are those all about us who lack but her opportunities,) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... an oak, was seen by a Hawk, who made a swoop down, and seized him. The Nightingale earnestly besought the Hawk to let him go, saying that he was not big enough to satisfy the hunger of a Hawk, who ought to pursue the larger birds. The Hawk said: "I should indeed have lost my senses if I should let go food ready to my hand, for the sake of pursuing ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... about a concert he had been to hear.—I don't like your chopped music anyway. That woman—she had more sense in her little finger than forty medical societies—Florence Nightingale—says that the music you pour out is good for sick folks, and the music you pound out isn't. Not that exactly, but something like it. I have been to hear some music-pounding. It was a young woman, with as many white muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it. She—gave ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they came, Ludar supporting the old nurse, the serving man carrying a box, the maiden walking quietly in front, as calmly as if she were taking an evening walk to hear the nightingale sing. Not a word was spoken as they embarked, or until the boat, with Ludar and me at the oars, was dropping swiftly down the stream. Then the old woman broke ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... athletes—men and women—have won great fame by the speed and skill and daring with which they carried forward the torch and, themselves dropping in their tracks, have passed the flame on to the next runner; Paul, Francis, Penn, Livingstone, Mackay, Florence Nightingale, and a host of others. And many who have run just as bravely and swiftly have won no fame at all though their work was just as great. But the fame or the forgetting really does not matter. The fact is that the race is still running; it has not yet been won. Whose ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... contented was I to be a listener. His subjects were the architecture of the middle ages; the stained glass of that period; sculpture, embracing monuments particularly. On this subject his opinion of Mrs. Nightingale's monument in Westminster Abbey, differs from all others that I have seen or heard. He places it above every other in the Abbey, and observed in relation to it, that the spectator 'saw nothing else.' Milton, Shakspeare, Shenstone, Pope, Byron, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... us," he said, "and we will listen as the old listen to the voices of youth, as the nightingale listens to the properly trained vocalist, as Nature listens to Art. Sing to us, beautiful rose-coloured children, until we forget that you are singing a hymn, and remember only that you are young, and that some day, in the long-delayed fulness of time, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the action is obtained by the simplest description, a cart casting the shadow of its great wheels, a bell now and then sounding afar off across the marshes, references to the owl adding its plaint to the song of the nightingale, to the crickets who stop to listen now and then, and the recurring verses about the "magnanarello" reminds us now and then, like a lovely leitmotiv, of the group of singing girls about ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... Plat, as I wish her dear Arms Had my Body encompass'd, with Nightingale's Charms, And the Leg of an Hog, gives my dearest her Name. Her Beauties so great set my ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... Nightingale. In one of my books at home, a Chatterbox, I think, there is a picture of her going through a hospital ward. Mothah told me how good she was to the soldiahs, and how they loved her. They even kissed her shadow on the wall as she ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... St. Mary Magdalen, shown in all old plans of the Church, has likewise disappeared within the present century? This Chapel adjoined the South transept, and was removed during the repairs, under the able superintendence of Mr. Gwilt. It was thus described by Mr. Nightingale in 1818: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... pronounce. If I have bound myself to pipe as others please, it need not be entirely; and I can promise you it shall not be; but still I am sensible when I lift my "little quill" of having forced the note of a woodland wren into the popular nightingale's—which may end in the daw's, from straining; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are the terra-cotta images of Spain! What a climax of absurdity teases the eye in the monstrosities in stone which draw travellers in Sicily to the eccentric nobleman's villa, near Palermo! Who does not shrink from the French allegory and horrible melodrama of Roubillac's monument to Miss Nightingale, in Westminster Abbey? How like Horace Walpole to dote on Ann Conway's canine groups! We actually feel sleepy, as we examine the little black marble Somnus of the Florence Gallery, and electrified with the first sight of the Apollo, and won to sweet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... sweetness pale Even the soft notes of the nightingale, Whose theme is wrought of laughter and of tears From all ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... opaque Full of creatures wide awake! Noiseless then, on feet or wings, Out they come, all moon-eyed things! In and out they pop and play, Have it all their own wild way, Fly and frolic, scamper, glow; Treat the moon, for all her show, State, and opal diadem, Like a nursemaid watching them. And the nightingale doth snare All the merry tumult rare, All the music and the magic, All the comic and the tragic, All the wisdom and the riot Of the midnight moonlight diet, In a diamond hoop of song, Which ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... through the streets. He who was weary forgot his past day's work; he who was sad felt his sadness less on such an evening as this; he who was alone the whole year felt impelled to seek companionship to-day. Groups stood laughing and chattering at the doors; children were playing; the caged nightingale sang her sweetest song—sang of the early summer—that happy time when life is sweet and fond ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the absence of thought; it is rather from the depth of thought that it springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music. See, while she pauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her lip, as amidst that careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more grave and sustained,—the nightingale singing by day (as sometimes, though rarely, he is heard,—perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps because he sees from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his race),—see, as she listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble, how quickly the smile is sobered, how the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foot through quiet country lanes. Through the trees, the glimmer of the searchlights' flashes comes and goes like giant fireflies. The clear notes of a nightingale ring out in the stillness of the night. Nestling in the valley lies a large town, which only a fortnight ago was filled with civilians, 'redeemed Italians,' who had enjoyed eight months of prosperity and liberty under Italian rule. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... George Gordon with a bonfire made of materials brought from Catholic chapels and houses in Moorfields, which they burnt before his house in Welbec-street; a third party went to Virginia-lane, Wapping; and a fourth to Nightingale-lane, East Smithfield, where they severally destroyed the Catholic chapels, and committed other outrages. That night London was in the hands of the mob, and fires were seen on every hand; while property to a large amount changed owners. On Tuesday, which was the day appointed for the consideration ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "One Nightingale doesn't make a base hospital," replied Kemp. "I take off my hat—we all do—to women who are willing to undergo the drudgery and discomfort which hospital training involves. But I'm not talking about Florence Nightingales. The young person whom I am referring to is just intelligent ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... inhabitants of the trees near our camp, amused us during the evening by their varied notes. One which we watched was of a graceful form, with a long fine beak, its plumage being grey-brown above and white beneath. Though larger than the nightingale, to which it has often been compared, it has a superior and more varied voice, but lacks that sweetness of expression and melancholy charm which have made the reputation of the plaintive Philomel. It has, however, a song of its own, composed of a dozen ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... with the nightingale, comes bounding downstairs some time after tea and wants to know why breakfast isn't ready. Only last week I heard him exhorting Harriet to call him early next day as he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... room was filled with a sweet freshness; the windows had stood wide open all day. In the garden, opposite his window, a nightingale was trilling out its sweet song; the evening sky became covered with the warm glow of the rising moon behind the rounded tops of the lime trees. Nejdanov lit a candle; a grey moth fluttered in from the dark garden straight to the flame; she circled round it, whilst ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls. I got them in Italy. The song of the nightingale is the deadliest known to ornithology. That demoniacal shriek can kill at thirty yards. The note of the cue-owl is infinitely soft and sweet—soft and sweet as the whisper of a flute. But penetrating—oh, beyond belief; it can bore through boiler-iron. It is a lingering note, and comes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his way through the sky-hued water stealthily lest he disturb the leisure of the swans, drowsy above their own images; lest he discourage the nightingale trying a few low flute notes in the cathedral tower of shadow that was a tree above the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... female form enveloped in a loosely flowing dress of virgin whiteness. The air was cool and serene, and except the rustling of the surrounding foliage, when agitated by the breeze, or the soft plaintive voice of the nightingale, no obtrusive sound disturbed the solemn silence. The blue vault of heaven, glittering with countless stars, the rich perfume flung around by the orange flower and jasmine, and a stilly languor that pervaded the spot, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... wail! Oh, bird, I pray thee, be glad! Sing to me once, dear nightingale, The old ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... establishes necessary government—he also shall have my respect,—he has it,—he deserves his carriage and pair as fully as the road-mender deserves his dinner. We should not grudge or envy either man the reward due to their separate positions. The nightingale has a sweet voice,—the peacock screams—the one is plain in colour, the other gorgeous,—and there is no actual equality; yet the one bird does not grudge the other its position, inasmuch as though there is no Equality there is Compensation. So it is with men. There ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... hands] Oh, do not cease at all; I thought the nightingale sang but at night; Or if thou needst must cease, then let my lips Touch the sweet lips that ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... the accompaniment of the singing of her own heart the poor girl was unconscious of the music. If it was to the evening's nightingale she listened or to the twittering of the inferior songstresses of the grove who lifted up their voices when the queen was silent she could hardly have said; the melody her heart was chanting triumphantly drowned every note ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... when Jenny Lind arrived here, about every fool within five-and-fifty miles ran their heels and brazen faces after the Nightingale and her carriage wherever she went, from her bed-chamber to her dinner table, from her drawing-room to the Concert Hall. It took Barnum and his whole "private secretary" force and equal number of policemen and servants, besides Stephens himself, of the Revere, and his ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... enchanted with the scenery. "The land is elevated," he says, "with many mountains and peaks ... most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms, accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so tall that they seem to touch the sky; and I have been told that they never lose their foliage. The nightingale [i. e. some kind of thrush] and other small birds of a thousand kinds were singing in the month of November [December] when I was there."[522] Before he had done much toward exploring this paradise, a sudden and grave ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... good wishes—which, unlike most wishes, were sure to come true. The fortunate little princess was to grow up the fairest woman in the world; to have a temper sweet as an angel; to be perfectly graceful and gracious; to sing like a nightingale; to dance like a leaf on a tree; and to possess every accomplishment under the sun. Then the old fairy's turn came. Shaking her head spitefully, she uttered the wish that when the baby grew up into a young lady, and learned to spin, she might prick her ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... the flowers that spoke. From the Foxglove in its pride, To the Shepherd's Purse by the bare road-side; From the snap-jack heart of the Starwort frail, To meadows full of Milkmaids pale, And Cowslips loved by the nightingale. Rosette of the tasselled Hazel-switch, Sky-blue star of the ditch; Dandelions like mid-day suns; Bindweed that runs; Butter and Eggs with the gaping lips, Sweet Hawthorn that hardens to haws, and Roses that die into hips; Lords-with-their-Ladies cheek-by-jowl, In purple surcoat and pale-green ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... on the tables should tell the life-stories of those who have bravely fought and never faltered. Biographies of men like Wilberforce and Howard who have lived to help their fellow-men; and of women like Florence Nightingale and Lady Stanley, who have regarded their social gifts and ample wealth as calls to service; histories of charities, intellectual development and noble achievement, pictures like Sir Galahad and The Light of the World ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... moment for its publication seems well chosen. There is always in England a floating fund of sympathy for what is above the everyday sordid cares of life; and these better feelings, so nobly invested for the last two years in Florence Nightingale's career, are just set free. To what will they next be attached? If you can lay hold of them, they may bring about a deeper abolition than any legislative one,—the abolition of the heart- heresy that man's worth comes, not from God, but ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wake! the nightingale Tells to the Moon her love-lorn tale; Now doth the brook that's hush'd by day, As through the vale she winds her way, In murmurs sweet rejoice; The leaves, by the soft night-wind stirr'd, Are whispering many a gentle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... as I have seemed to hear, When all the under-air was still, The low voice of the glad new year Call to the freshly-flowered hill. I heard, as I have often heard The nightingale in leavy woods Call to its mate, when nothing stirred To left or ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... it hadn't quite made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Nightingale was singing far too loud; I never heard So harsh a bird, I wonder how she ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... intuition; and that the songs came floating from his lips and pen as music from the throat of birds. So he held his own orthodoxy more orthodox than that of the schools. In which view poor John Clare was decidedly wrong, seeing that his music was not offered gratis like that of the skylark and nightingale, but was looking out for the pounds, shillings, and pence of a ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... consulted your taste and convenience. Here are some magic bonbons. If you eat this one with the lavender color you can dance thereafter as lightly and gracefully as if you had been trained a lifetime. After you consume the pink confection you will sing like a nightingale. Eating the white one will enable you to become the finest elocutionist in the land. The chocolate piece will charm you into playing the piano better than Rubenstein, while after eating you lemon-yellow bonbon you can easily kick ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... stepped down very softly to the second tier. A nightingale was calling low its liquid invocation, "Ho-ren-k-y-y-o-o-o!" Perhaps old Kano moved so softly that he might not lose the echoes of this cry. The two men seemed alone in the silent scene. Once Tatsu thought his eye caught a swift flicker, as of a gray sleeve, but he was not sure. At ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... heroines as well as its heroes. England, in her wars, had a Florence Nightingale; and the soldiers in the expression of their adoration, used to stoop and kiss the hem of her garment as she passed. America, in her war, had a Dr. Mary Walker. Nobody ever stooped to kiss the hem of her garment—because that was not exactly the kind of a garment she wore. But why ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... the drawing-room has been re-papered and painted, and that there were no drawings and no flowers the room was not in the least altered; yet to us it seemed like a sepulcher, and we rejoiced to breathe the sweet air of the little garden, and listen to a nightingale, whose melancholy cadence harmonized with ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... them out of their lower passions to sunlight of true healing Life, it drives the sensual heart of them, and the gods that govern it, into mere and pure frenzy of resolved rage, and gets torn to pieces by them, and ended; only the nightingale staying by its grave to sing. All which appearing to be anything rather than helpful or encouraging instruction for beginners, we shall, for the present, I think, do well to desire these enigmatical teachers to put up their pipes and be gone; and betaking ourselves in the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Hungarian gypsy, began a piece of his own composition, which had all the ardor of a mild 'galopade' and a Satanic hunt, with intervals of dying sweetness, during which the painted skeleton they called the Countess declared that she certainly heard a nightingale warbling in the moonlight. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... flag. Everywhere the dog violet and blue veronica flourished in enormous clumps, and near the Strand was a great patch of Solomon's seal. It was a continual pleasure to see the wood clothe itself from the nakedness of early April and increase in fulness of life until we left at midsummer. The nightingale sang there unwearingly, but other birds were few, and I never noticed a nest in the wood. The few pheasants which survived a winter with the 4th Division were, I fear, exterminated by us. Rabbits continued plentiful in spite ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... of the same name, small but elegant, with its pillars of white marble and gold, one voice of angelic sweetness was singing behind the grating alone, and in the midst of a most deathlike stillness. It sounded like the notes of a nightingale in a cage. I could have listened for hours, but our time was limited, and we set off anew. Fortunately the evening was delightful, and the moon shining brightly. We visited about twenty churches in succession. In all the organ was pealing, the blaze of light ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... starlight night; the air soft and balmy, and laden with the perfume of the flowers. A nightingale was singing plaintively in an adjoining tree, and presently came a response equally tender from another part of the grove. Mistress Nutter could not choose but listen, and the melody so touched her that she was half suffocated by ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in spring, when winter tide With his blasts, terrible to bide Was overcome; and birdies small, As throstle and the nightingale, Began right merrily to sing, And to make in their singing Sundrie notes, and varied sounds, And melody pleasant to hear, And the trees began to blow With buds, and bright blossom also, To win the covering of their heads Which wicked winter had them riven, And every grove ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... within us, and we find it in everything around us. It is the veil of "Isis" which science, her worshipper, is ever trying to lift, but cannot. The muse of Inspiration pours forth her melodious voice, like the nightingale, in the darkness and the shady covert. We listen to her song with entranced ears; a few whose spirits are "finely touched," try to repeat it; but who has ever seen her; the soul that animates, the spirit that inspires! ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... to spring, The dews of morn in pearly radiance lie, The mists of eve rise circling to the sky, And Kaminabi's thickets ring With the sweet notes the nightingale ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... vales, and situated in the heart of the very wildest and most romantic part of South Wales, between Brecon and Swansea, and at the base of the Rock of the Night, stands the Castle of Craig-y-nos. This is the nightingale's nest. The princely fortune which Patti has accumulated has enabled her so to beautify and enlarge her home, that it now contains all the luxuries which Science and Art have enabled Fortune's favorites ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... followed the straight road to Kiev, which the Robber Nightingale had held for thirty years, and on which he suffered no traveller to pass, on foot or horse; putting them all to death, not with the sword, but with his robber's whistle. When Iliya came into the open fields, he rode into ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... casements discussing a bottle of excellent wine, and looking out upon the dark woods which surrounded the building, watching the full moon soar into the cloudless sky from behind the gently-swaying foliage, and listening to the song of the nightingale, amidst which we once or twice thought we detected the tinkling sounds of a guitar apparently issuing from one of the open windows in another wing ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... could see the huge dome of the cathedral, looming like a bubble over the shadowy houses, and the weary sentinels pacing up and down on the misty terrace by the river. Far away, in an orchard, a nightingale was singing. A faint perfume of jasmine came through the open window. He brushed his brown curls back from his forehead, and taking up a lute, let his fingers stray across the cords. His heavy eyelids drooped, and a strange languor came ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... the moon. May's nightingale called its mate from the breathless boughs; and so Edith and Harold were betrothed by the grave of the son of Cerdic. And from the line of Cerdic had come, since Ethelbert, all the Saxon kings who with sword and with sceptre had ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seem long, but very, very awful, till I recovered consciousness again. Somewhere near, a passing bell was tolling. The dogs all round the neighbourhood were howling, and in our shrubbery, seemingly just outside, a nightingale was singing. I was dazed and stupid with pain and terror and weakness, but the sound of the nightingale seemed like the voice of my dead mother come back to comfort me. The sounds seemed to have awakened the maids, too, for I could hear their ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Madam Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt shocked horror is similarly expressed by Canon Scott Holland at the possibility of the Swedish Nightingale, who was arranging to give a concert there, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... would catch cold. That's not for me. [Rises] If you needs must go, sir, you had better go alone. That life is not for me. I will go and hear the nightingale. ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... form or the permanence of the marriage union, which is its essential and valuable part. It is not the legal or religious formality which sanctifies marriage, it is the reality of the marriage which sanctifies the form. Fielding has satirized in Nightingale, Tom Jones's friend, the shallow-brained view of connubial society which degrades the reality of marriage to exalt the form. Nightingale has the greatest difficulty in marrying a girl with whom he has already had sexual relations, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... epithalamium in a poor fellow's ears, when he doesn't know a single human woman nearer than Paris.' To make matters worse, the day ended in a fiery sunset, and then there was a full moon; and in the rosery a nightingale performed its sobbing serenade. 'Please go out and give that bird a penny, and tell him to go away,' Paul said to a servant. It was all very well to jest, but at every second breath he sighed profoundly. I'm afraid he had ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... and death. But her vitality triumphed in the struggle, and in a few days, with careful nursing she was able to sit up and converse. One of those noble women, who emulated the example and the glory of Florence Nightingale in nursing and ministering to the sick and wounded in the army, won the maiden-soldier's confidence, and into her ear she ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... said Julius, "does the little nightingale utter wails and deep sighs. Only in the night does the flower shyly open and breathe freely the fragrant air, intoxicating both mind and senses in equal delight. Only in the night, Lucinda, does the bold speech of deep passion flow divinely from the lips, which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... PEACOCK for ease, and the PARROT for talk; Till, at last, poor SIR ARGUS began to complain, Of the sad inconvenience he felt from his train, And propos'd, as the sky seem'd to threaten a shower, To rest till the morning, at Nightingale Bower; The obsequious PARROT replied by a bow, And they went on as fast as their strength ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... not his lordship's fault. Had propriety permitted, he would have brought up the brigade in close column of divisions, to hear Lady Mabel sing; and he could not help saying to the gentlemen beside him: "I have heard you young fellows talk about the nightingale, and have even known some of you spend hours in the moonlit grove, listening to their music, but my bird from foggy Scotland can out-warble a wood full of them." And no one felt disposed ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of Laustic, or the Nightingale, is purely of Breton origin, and indeed is proved to be so by its title. "Laustic, I deem, men name it in that country" (Brittany), says Marie in her preface to the lay, "which being interpreted means rossignol ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... head. "No; because you do not understand music as he does. And are you as rich? I cost a great deal of money even for eating alone. But you will be glad when you hear me when I come back. Do you hear that nightingale? It must ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rocks combing her beautiful hair; rays of light surrounded her graceful head, revealing her charms in spite of the night and the distance and as he gazed, her lips opened, and a song thrilled through the silence, soft and plaintive like the sweet notes of a nightingale on a still ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... the singer succeeds in transferring his feelings to others he is an artist, this regardless of whether his voice is great or small. Voice alone does not constitute an artist. One must have something to give. Schumann said: "The reason the nightingale sings love songs and the lap dog barks is because the soul of the nightingale is filled with love and that of the lap dog with bark." It will be apparent therefore, that the study of the art of singing should devote itself to developing in the singer the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... an egg," the Easy Chair retorted, "but there is not the same winning appeal in the baldness of the superannuated bird which has evolved from it—eagle or nightingale, parrot or ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... she should have the wit of an angel; the third, that she should have a wonderful grace in everything she did; the fourth, that she should dance perfectly well; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; and the sixth, that she should play all kinds of music to ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... pomegranate, with great plantations of mulberry trees, from which was produced the finest silk. The vine clambered from tree to tree, the grapes hung in rich clusters about the peasant's cottage, and the groves were rejoiced by the perpetual song of the nightingale. In a word, so beautiful was the earth, so pure the air, and so serene the sky of this delicious region that the Moors imagined the paradise of their Prophet to be situated in that part of the heaven which overhung the kingdom ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... endless spheres of light, because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts of evil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the fret" in the world "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers that in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply the Queen Moon is on ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... moon shone a million times brighter, the sky was a million times bluer, and the nightingale sung a million times sweeter than ever before. At least so thought the beautiful Hortensia and her artist-lover, as they strolled, arm-in-arm, through the woody lawn that skirted the garden of Sweetbriar Lodge, and held sweet converse ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... Buz. Helpe? what nightingale was that? did one cry out for helpe? there's no Christian soule in the house but they two & my selfe; and 'twas not mine, I know by the smallnes of the voice; twas some woman cryde out, & therefore can be none ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... breast. The Robin first, who had shared his peril, brought a feather sadly scorched, but precious; the Lark next, who had helped in the time of need. The Eagle bestowed a kingly feather, the Thrush, the Nightingale,—every ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... cooling, as it groweth towards summer.' 'Then what wouldst thou have done?' asked the mother; and she answered, 'An it please my father and you, I would fain have a little bed made in the gallery, that is beside his chamber and over his garden, and there sleep. There I should hear the nightingale sing and having a cooler place to lie in, I should fare much better than in your chamber.' Quoth the mother, 'Daughter, comfort thyself; I will tell thy father, and as he will, so will ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the lark or the linnet? The babble of brooklet or rill? Nay, that "Voice," to their ears, hath more in it Than sounds in the nightingale's trill. There's a song, though to some it sounds raucous, For them most seductively rolls; 'Tis the crow of a bird (the "Caw-Caw-Cus") Whose song is so like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... precautions against disease as a confession of cowardice. Summer, the yellow-fever season, is here and—well, I'm getting disheartened. Disheartened and hungry! They're new sensations to me." She sighed. "I imagined I was going to work wonders—I thought I was going to be a Florence Nightingale, and the men were going ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... These illustrative spectacles are not among the best inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... revolver, and gurgling out '54.40' to the Sergeant-at-Arms in particular, and decency in general, as a proof of his fitness to be regarded as a mate for his Southern colleagues. Fancy Brignoli singing '1.2.3,' as he reminds us by his good singing and wooden acting of a nightingale imprisoned ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Owl and the Pussy-Cat, Lear (poem), in Story-Telling Poems; The Partridge and the Crow, in Dutton, The Tortoise and the Geese; The Pious Robin, in Brown, Curious Book of Birds; The Rustic and the Nightingale, in Dutton, The Tortoise and the Geese; The Sparrows, Thaxter (poem), in Story-Telling Poems; The Sparrows and the Snake, in Dutton, The Tortoise and the Geese; The Spendthrift and the Swallow, in Scudder, Book ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... of the veery fills a place in the chorus of the woods that the song of the vesper sparrow fills in the chorus of the fields. It has the nightingale's habit of singing in the twilight, as indeed have all our thrushes. Walk out toward the forest in the warm twilight of a June day, and when fifty rods distant you will hear their soft, reverberating notes rising ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... rolled a torrent, now hiding beneath a crust of ice, now leaping and foaming over the black rocks. In two hours we were barely able to double Mount Krestov—two versts in two hours! Meanwhile the clouds had descended, hail and snow fell; the wind, bursting into the ravines, howled and whistled like Nightingale the Robber. [16] Soon the stone cross was hidden in the mist, the billows of which, in ever denser and more compact masses, rushed in from ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov |
