‘For surely,’ says the minstrel, ’Hope is not born of earth, or it were perishable.  Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong love straineth the heavens with.  This owe we to thy music, bridal nightingale!  And the difference of this celestial spirit from the smirking phantasy of whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the difference between painted day with its poor ambitious snares, and night lifting its myriad tapers round the throne of the eternal, the prophet stars of everlasting time!  And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and the one is unregretted, and the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of divine melancholy; her ears crowded with the pale surges that wrap this shifting shore; in her eyes a shape of beauty floating dimly, that she will not attain this side the water, but broodeth on evermore.

’Therefore, hold on thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one ecstasy, death-dividing bird!  Fill the woods with passionate chuckle and sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven!  Pour out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, till, like a priest of the inmost temple, ‘tis drunken with fair intelligences!’

Thus the old minstrels and minnesingers.

Strong and full sang the nightingales that night Farina held watch by the guilty castle that entombed his living beloved.  The castle looked itself a denser shade among the moonthrown shadows of rock and tree.  The meadow spread like a green courtyard at the castle’s foot.  It was of lush deep emerald grass, softly mixed with grey in the moon’s light, and showing like jasper.  Where the shadows fell thickest, there was yet a mist of colour.  All about ran a brook, and babbled to itself.  The spring crocus lifted its head in moist midgrasses of the meadow, rejoiced with freshness.  The rugged heights seemed to clasp this one innocent spot as their only garden-treasure; and a bank of hazels hid it from the castle with a lover’s arm.

‘The moon will tell me,’ mused Farina; ’the moon will signal me the hour!  When the moon hangs over the round tower, I shall know ’tis time to strike.’

The song of the nightingales was a full unceasing throb.

It went like the outcry of one heart from branch to branch.  The four long notes, and the short fifth which leads off to that hurried gush of music, gurgling rich with passion, came thick and constant from under the tremulous leaves.

At first Farina had been deaf to them.  His heart was in the dungeon with Margarita, or with the Goshawk in his dangers, forming a thousand desperate plans, among the red-hot ploughshares of desperate action.  Finally, without a sense of being wooed, it was won.  The tenderness of his love then mastered him.

‘God will not suffer that fair head to come to harm!’ he thought, and with the thought a load fell off his breast.