“Very old are we men; / Our dreams are tales / Told in dim Eden / By Eve's nightingales.”
Walter de La Mare
“Babies haven't any hair; Old men's heads are just as bare; between the cradle and the grave lie a haircut and a shave”
Samuel Hoffenstein
“The nightingales are sobbing in / The orchards of our mothers, / And hearts that we broke long ago / Have long been breaking others.”
W. H. Auden
“No Nightingale did ever chant More welcome notes to weary bands Of travelers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebri”
William Wordsworth
“Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! / That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close! / The Nightingale that in the Branches sang, / Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!”
Edward Fitzgerald
“O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray / Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still.”
John Milton
“Everyone goes back to Florence Nightingale and her lamp. That's not where nursing started.”
Jerry Lucas
