The song of the nightingale is to be heard, without intermission, for fifteen days and nights, continuously, when the foliage¹ is thickening, as it bursts from the bud; a bird which deserves our admiration² in no slight degree. First of all, what a powerful voice it has in so small a body! its note, how long, and how well sustained! And then, too, it is the only bird the notes of which are modulated³ in accordance with the strict rules of musical science. At one moment, as it sustains its breath, it will prolong its note, and then at another, will vary it with different inflections; then, again, it will break into distinct chirrups, or pour forth⁴ an endless series of roulades. 207 Then it will warble to itself, while taking breath, or disguise its voice in an instant; while sometimes, again, it will twitter to itself, now with a full note, now with a grave, now again sharp, now with a broken note, and now with a prolonged one. Sometimes, when it thinks fit, it will break out into quavers, and will run through, in succession, alto, tenor⁵, and bass⁶: in a word, in so tiny a throat is to be found all the melody that the ingenuity⁷ of man has ever discovered through the medium of the invention of the most exquisite⁸ flute⁹: so, that there can be no doubt it was an infallible presage¹⁰ of his future sweetness as a poet, when one of these creatures perched and sang on the infant lips of the poet Stesichorus.