From ‘The Nightingale’

Abstract

[…] The nightingale, let us repeat, is the most unsad thing in the world; even more unsad than the peacock full of gleam. He has nothing to be sad about. He feels perfect with life. It isn’t conceit. He just feels life-perfect, and he trills it out — shouts, jugs, gurgles, trills, gives long, mock-plaintiff calls, makes declarations, assertions, triumphs; but he never reflects. It is pure music, in so far as you could never put words to it. But there are words for the feelings aroused in us by the song. No, even that is not true. There are no words to tell what one really feels, hearing the nightingale. It is something so much purer than words, which are all tainted. Yet we can say, it is some sort of feeling of triumph in one’s own life-perfection.