A nightingale cannot sing in a cage. [ Proverb ]
The nightingale is sovereign of song. [ Spenser ]
It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word. [ Byron ]
O nightingale, that on yon blooming spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lovers heart doth fill! [ Milton ]
Say that she rail; why then I'll tell her plain.
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses, newly washed with dew;
Say she be mute and will not speak a word,
Then I'll commend her volubility
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence. [ William Shakespeare ]
The splash and stir of fountains spouted up and showering down
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose:
And all about us peal'd the nightingale,
Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. [ Tennyson ]
The love-lorn nightingale nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well. [ Milton ]
Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy! [ Milton ]
The nightingale, their only vesperbell, sung sweetly to the rose the day's farewell. [ Byron ]
It was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree. [ William Shakespeare ]
Even a man's exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is a mimicry, and not the nightingale. [ Kant ]
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! [ Shakespeare ]
'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. [ Coleridge ]