Nightingales – Robert Bridges

Nightingales - Robert Bridges

Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,

And bright in the fruitful valleys, the streams, wherefrom

Ye learn your song:

Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,

Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air

Bloom the year long!

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:

Our song is the voice of the desire, that hunts our dreams,

A throe of the heart,

Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,

No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,

For all our art.

Along aloud in the ruptured ear of men

We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,

As night is withdrawn

From these sweet-springing meads and bursting bough of May

Dream, while innumerable choir of day

Welcome the dawn.

Summary:

‘Nightingales’ is a poem that goes against all the Romantic qualities that are normally given to these birds. These (birds) are small; reddish brown birds usually migrate to warm places in the winter. They sing very sweetly by day as well as by night. Many poets including John Keats and W.B. Yeats have written in praise of the nightingale, because for them, the song of this bird meant perfection and beauty. Robert Bridges, however, associates the bird with deep sorrow. The poet’s attitude may be based on the Greek legend of Procene and Philomela which tells of the origin of the nightingale.

Procene and Philomela were sisters and daughters of the King of Athens. Procene was given in marriage to Tereus, who was king of the Thraciaus and who had helped the king of Athens. Tereus, however, was in love with Philomela and he seduced her after telling her that Procene was dead. He also tore Procene’s tongue but Procene wove a message for her sister into a robe. Philomela helped her sister escape from Tereus’s prison. Procene killed and cooked their son Itys for Tereus to eat. When Tereus discovered what he was eating, he chased the sisters with an axe but the gods changed all three into birds. Tereus became a hawk, Procene a swallow and Philomela, a nightingale.

The legend is a terrible, heartrending one and explains the poet’s anti-romantic view of the nightingale’s song. The poem is in two voices. The first verse is in the voice of the typical Romantic who imagines that nightingale belongs so a beautiful world filled with flowers and fruits equal to a paradise.

The second and third voices are in the voices of the nightingale who, in reply show how romantic and sad their world actually is. It is not of fullness fertility they sing, but of dreams and desires that never fulfilled. Even their song is unable to express the depth of their sorrow. The last two lines suggest that the more ordinary birds who greet the sunrise are the ones that are really joyful.

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