The Nightingale: together with Hymns from the Office of the Passion of the Lord

By Saint Bonaventure

The Nightingale, attributed to the early Franciscan mystic and philosopher St. Bonaventure, is an extended and complex poetical composition telling the story of the dying day of this mysterious songbird. According to medieval legend, upon that fateful day the nightingale ascends the highest tree it can find, and from there pours forth a ceaseless torrent of passionate, ebullient song. In this transcendent singing, the motifs of love, pain, and bliss are mystically intertwined in an almost intoxicated ecstasy. The song climaxes in death itself, which thus becomes, paradoxically, the apotheosis and consummation of love and of life. The legend of the dying nightingale functions as a symbolic depiction of the life and death of Christ, as well as the progress of the individual soul towards its final deific eternity when it is dissolved into the realms of celestial light. The vivid, rhythmic language of the Latin original, with its haunting and striking beauty, is carefully emulated in this new adaptation of the work into English verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781725261778

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The Nightingale

together with Hymns from the Office of the Passion of the Lord

Attributed to Saint Bonaventure

Freely adapted into English verse by

Robert Nixon

The Nightingale

together with Hymns from the Office of the Passion of the Lord

Copyright ©

2020

Robert Nixon. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Resource Publications

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paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-6175-4

hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-6176-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-6177-8

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

09/17/15

Dedicated,

with loving devotion

and humble veneration,

to the

Blessed Virgin Mary,

Queen of Heaven,

Source of our joy,

Portal of Paradise,

Mystical rose,

Fairest of maidens,

Mother of God,

And disciple who stood most faithfully

by the cross of your divine Son.

Quod si me lyricis vatibus inseres,

sublimi feriam sidera vertice.

—Horace

Poor melancholy bird—that all night long

Tell’st to the Moon thy tale of tender woe;

From what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow,

And whence this mournful melody of song?

Thy poet’s musing fancy would translate

What mean the sounds that swell thy little breast,

When still at dewy eve thou leav’st thy nest,

Thus to the listening Night to sing thy fate?

Pale Sorrow’s victims wert thou once among,

Tho’ now released in woodlands wild to rove?

Say—hast thou felt from friends some cruel wrong,

Or died’st thou—martyr of disastrous