A little street, half garden and half house;

But scarce could hear each other speak for noise

Of clock and chimes, like silver hammers falling

On silver anvils, and 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.”

The only thing wrong in this nice bit of description, as Dr. S. E. Dawson has pointed out in his study of “The Princess,” is in reference to the song of the nightingale. It is only the male bird which sings. Scientifically, therefore, Tennyson is wrong, though historically and poetically he is correct, for, according to the Greek myth, Phi. . . Read More