"MAGIC CASEMENTS."

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 76, 29 March 1924, Page 17

"MAGIC CASEMENTS."

! LISTENING-IN" TO PHILOMELA

(By CYKA2CO.)

JO broadcast tie nightingale's song Is tte latest enterprise of the kind in EngThe music is to be caught from "moonlit cedar" where "thick the bursts come crowding through the toves," and distributed to patrons seated comfortably in drawing-room armchairs. It -vriß n° l° n g er be necessary to go into tfe country to 'near the nightingale. It Ttfll not even be necessary to go where there is a garden, aa Keats when he wrote the most ijaaioiis of his odes and the most lovdy P° em about any bird. The poet mj fe e a ble to sit in his 6tudy in London ■ml "listen-in" to that "high requiem." Possibly 1/ie song of the nightingale will th«s be S' vcn not only to England, but to the world. We in the outer eeas, who •learnt from our wistful mothers to call old England Home," and have read of the magic of that song as it floats across o ]d fragrant lawns, we who have dreamed dreams of seeing the English landscape in its glory—we may be able jo one wish from this great distance. We m a y *>c able to sit within cirit of the Xew Zealand bush and let the sound of the English nightingale creep into our ears. The drawback would be that as the nightingale is prijaarily a night bird its song would come to us"in the garish and prosaic daytime. Vight is the time for music, though Keats did write his ode after breakfast. Think, however, how education might benefit. A class of children stumbling through the "Nightingale Ode," and perhaps being lored in the process, might be greatly stimulated if they heard a real nightingile singing in a real English wood. !Ehe nightingale has inspired more poetry than any other bird. The richieEß, variety, and plaintiveness of its song, the fact that .most of its singing is done at night, and the legends that have clustered round it, combine to give it a unique position among birds. The Greek legend counts for a good deal. Philomela -was the sister-in-law of a Tbracian prince. While she was under Ks protection on the way to Ms country, he abused his trust, and cut out her toDgue and imprisoned her that she might aot reveal his perfidy. She sent word to her sister of her plight by weaving the story into a tapestry, and the two women took a ghastly vengeance on the wrongdoer. Just as "he was soinsr to stab them they Wre changed into a nightingale and a gvrallow respectively, and he into a hoopoe. It is strange how these brutal Greek • stories flowered in poetry. Matthew Arnold recalls the legend in cne of the finest of his poems, "PhiloEtla." and every lover of Swinburne remembers the reference in the most famous-of his choruses:—

Ana tbe brieht brown nightingale amorous, Is half assuaged for Itylus. <Ebe Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil and all toe pain.

Also the lament of Philomela in "Itylus," where she describes how she sings:—

Clothed with the light of the night on the

While the'hours and the wild birds follow,

Tafce flight and follow and find the sun.

One of the most beautiful laments called forth by bereaved friendship is that of the Greek Callimachus, ■which the Englishman William JohnsonCary turned into exquisite verse. How often, says Callimachus, you and I talked the sun down the sky.

And now tliat thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes. lons long ago at rest, iStOl are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake: For Death, he taJieth all away, but them ne cannot take-

Some of us might be disappointed if, after reading so much about the nightingale, we heard the ljird's song. The testimonials to its quality, however, are most impressive. The nightingale, says Izaak Walton, "breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that, it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might •well be lifted above earth, and say, .•Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints in heaven, when affordest bad men such music on earth?'" And without quoting further from so ■well known a poem as Keats' Ode, we may note that the present Poet Laureate has written a nightingale poem that is fit to go with the shining company of Greek and English tributes:—

■Beautiful must* be tlie mountains whence 'Ana ye brlgnt c ' in the fruitful valleys tie streams, wherefrom Ye learn your song: Where are those starry woods? Oh, mlgnt I wander there, . Anong 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 desire, that haunts our dreams. A throe of the heart. Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, - So dying cadence nor long sigh can sound. For all our art.

Hithertoi we colonials have been able to judge oil the worthiness of the nightingale by gping to Europe; now, perhaps, ■we may bo- able to "listen-in" across the world. As for our own birds, we have nothing tc. put beside the nightingale. No one will bother to broadcast the morepork or the weka. There are, however, day birds that some day may tempt the enterprise of broadcasters. The New Zealander in London may be able to cure his homesickness by "listening-in" while the tui sings, or the beU bird, or tie grey warbler.