One day in London the Master [`Abdu’l-Bahá] gave His listeners an unusual, imaginative, yet realistic dialogue between the Prophets and men: ‘Always, man has confronted the Prophets with this: “We were enjoying ourselves, and living according to our own opinions and desires. We ate; we slept; we sang; we danced. We had no fear of God, no hope of Heaven; we liked what we were doing, we had our own way. And then you came. You took away our pleasures. You told us now of the wrath of God, again of the fear of punishment and the hope of reward. You upset our good way of life.”
The Prophets of God have always replied: “You were content to stay in the animal world, We wanted to make you human beings. You were dark, We wanted you illumined; you were dead, We wanted you alive. You were earthly, We wanted you heavenly.” – p. 141 in Vignettes from the Life of `Abdu’l-Bahá
O SON OF SPIRIT!
The bird seeketh its nest; the nightingale the charm of the rose; whilst those birds, the hearts of men, content with transient dust, have strayed far from their eternal nest, and with eyes turned towards the slough of heedlessness are bereft of the glory of the divine presence. Alas! How strange and pitiful; for a mere cupful, they have turned away from the billowing seas of the Most High, and remained far from the most effulgent horizon.
The other day some some friends and I were talking about the nightingale, and wondering what it sounds like. The following are some of the results of googling the subject.
Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day.
Early writers assumed the female sang; in fact, it is the male.
The song is loud, with an impressive range of whistles, trills and gurgles.
In the Conference of the Birds by Attar, one of the birds mentioned is the Nightingale, and here’s how his part of the story starts:
The nightingale raises his head, drugged with passion,
Pouring the oil of earthly love in such a fashion
That the other birds shaded with his song, grow mute.
The leaping mysteries of his melodies are acute.
‘I know the secrets of Love, I am their piper,’
He sings, ‘I seek a David with broken heart to decipher
Their plaintive barbs, I inspire the yearning flute,
The daemon of the plucked conversation of the lute.
The roses are dissolved into fragrance by my song,
Hearts are torn with its sobbing tone, broken along
The fault lines of longing filled with desire’s wrong.
There is a poem by John Keats in 1819 called Ode to a Nightingale. It talks about the immortal nightingale and mortal man. Apparently spring came early in 1819.
The Emperor of China hears that one of the most beautiful things in his own land is the song of the nightingale. He sends his courtiers to take a nightingale from the nearby forest and present her as a guest at court. The bird can communicate with the humans and agrees to come, but when the Emperor is given a mechanical nightingale covered with jewels, he loses interest in the real bird, which flies back to its home. The mechanical bird breaks down. When the Emperor is taken ill, only the song of the true nightingale can heal him.
Here’s an adaptation of the play, by Faerie Tale Theatre:
