Rock, Progressive Rock PaulWNash
The Nightingale and the Rose

A song based on Oscar Wilde's fairy-tale "The Nightingale and the Rose". Written for Saint Valentine's Day 2017, and suitably romantic ... Here are the lyrics:

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE

Chapter 1: The three rose-trees

‘I have read all the wise men have written
And the secrets of death are mine
For want of one red rose
Despair and my heart entwine

For she would dance with me
Make joys of my woes
For one red rose – but in
My garden not one grows’

The nightingale had heard his song
And knew his love was true
More precious than fine pearls or gold
So through the grove she flew
And sped apace to seek the place
In which a red rose grew

A splendid rose-tree grew within
The garden’s central bed
But when the nightingale enquired
The rose-tree shook its head
‘My blooms are white as snow, as bright
As ancient bones’ it said
The nightingale flew on her way
To seek the rose of red

Round the old sundial a second rose-tree
Like a vine round an ancient tomb
But when the nightingale
Begged for a scarlet bloom

The rose-tree shook its head
‘My blossoms are gold,
Bright as the mermaid’s hair
Or crowns of the queens of old’

A third old rose-briar grew beneath
The student’s window-sill
‘My flowers are red’ it said, ‘But frost
Has touched my heart, I will
Not bear a flower this year, my power
To bloom lies cold and still’
The nightingale begged with her song
With all her curious skill

Chapter 2: The creaking of the briar

From the creaking of the briar there came an answer
‘There’s a way a rose is made
It is terrible to tell, I dare not tell it’
Said the bird ‘I am not afraid’
‘You must build it out of song by moonlight
Give your heart’s blood for its scarlet shade’

‘You must sing to me all night beneath the moonlight
And a thorn must pierce your heart
And your blood must fill my veins and turn to my blood’
She said ‘I will play my part’
For she reasoned that her life was less than Love
And she must serve its higher art

So she told the student all
And she asked him to be brave
And she asked him to be true
To revere the blood she gave
But he could not comprehend
The language of the birds
For he only knew of books
So he could not comprehend
The nightingale’s, the nightingale’s,
The nightingale’s sweet words

Chapter 3: The nightingale’s first song

But the oaktree understood
And felt a sadness in his breast
The nightingale had roosted there
And in his branches built her nest
‘Sing me a final song to ease
‘My loneliness’ was his request

The student took a notebook from his pocket, listening, leaning
Against the oaktree, wondering what this song had to impart
‘She conjures beauty, but that beauty all is show and preening
She is an artist and has only cobwebs in her heart
For everybody knows the arts are selfish, without meaning
She would not sacrifice herself and only loves her art’

Chapter 4: The nightingale’s last song

The moon came up
And the nightingale came to the barren briar

She set her breast against a thorn and sighed and sang
She sang of love between the gods and soon there sprang
A bud upon the topmost spray, that spread into a flower
And petal followed petal, as hour followed hour

She sang a summer song of joy – the moon leaned down
And wept to hear – the oak-tree shook his emerald gown
And all the while the rose unfurled upon the highest bough
But pale it was as moonlight or a marble cupid’s brow

All night she sang and the thorn pricked deeper
While the rose swelled, pearl-like in its pale attire
‘You must sing more sweetly and wake every sleeper
‘You must press closer’ cried the briar

And so the nightingale’s song swelled, more sweet and fierce
She pressed her breast upon the thorn and felt it pierce
And soon the rose began to show a vein of pinkish fire
Within its growing petals – ‘Press closer’ cried the briar

She sang and, as song followed song, the rose waxed red
‘Press closer, little nightingale’ the old briar said
‘I fear the dawn may break before the rose is quite complete
Press closer, still closer – and make your music sweet’

With one last burst her sweet song had ended
The scarlet rose was done, the moon grew pale and grave
And lingered through dawn as the last notes ascended
And Echo bore them to her cave

The briar cried ‘See how the rose is completed’
But the nightingale had no words to impart
She lay in the grass as the darkness retreated
The thorn embedded in her heart

Chapter 5: Madelaine

Madelaine danced in his arms
In dreams she pressed against his breast
And when the student woke he found
He could not work, he could not rest
All he knew was her name

Noon came and the student threw
His window wide and gasped to see
The moon still sailing in the sky
The rose upon the barren tree

Dextrously he plucked the rose
‘Its beauty puts the moon to shame!
What luck! So strange and fair a flower
Must have a complex Latin name
I shall bear it to her’

So the student took the rose and hastened to the
Villa of his professor
There he found his Madelaine upon the threshhold
Comb and glass in her silvery hands
‘Here,’ he cried, ‘the rose you craved, the finest rose, all
other roses are lesser!
You must wear it, near your heart, and as you promised
We shall dance through enchanted lands’

‘It will not go with my dress’ she swore
‘I recall no promise, and now I own
Many jewels, real jewels, which the Town Clark’s son
Has pressed into my hands – flowers cannot compete

For everyone knows that jewels cost more
Than the finest rose – you must dance alone’
‘You are cruel, ungrateful, for all I’ve done!’
Cried the student and threw the rose into the street

‘How foolish love is’ cried the student
A wheel crushed the rose where it lay
‘Its fallacious, erroneous, imprudent
I have wasted my wisdom this day

I’ll return to research and to reason
My books, for it’s Truth that I crave’
And from that day he studied, each season
Found him toiling as scholarship’s slave

Chapter 6: Postscript

And so the story ended
But what the writer left unsaid
Was that the student, Marius
Who followed Ariadne’s thread
Never once forgot his sweetheart
And the image of her face
Came before him quite unbidden
Then he’d pause and keep his place
In the works of Avicenna
Aristotle, Plato, Paine
With one finger while he lingered
In his dreams of Madelaine

He reached towards the top shelf
To grasp a great Socratic book
And something in the tooling
Upon the spine recalled the look
Of her golden hair where it curled
By her ear, upon her cheek
And he sighed and paused a moment
While he quite forgot the Greek
And imagined Madelaine and
He were dancing to a waltz
Then she faded and his thoughts came
Back to Crito and its faults

The years passed and the student
Wrote many books and wore the crowns
Of laurels of the learned
Societies of Europe’s towns
At the age of eighty-seven
On his death-bed he asked for
His own Observations on the
Organon to read once more

But as he leafed through the pages
It was Madelaine who filled his thoughts
He imagined her his sweet love
Though he knew her heart was hard as quartz
And he felt a pang of sorrow
And he let his Observations fall
‘Oh if only she had loved me
For the rose I gave her for the ball’
And as his last breath escaped his breast
He began to ask what magic might
Six decades before have left him blessed
By a wondrous rose that grew by night
By a wondrous rose that grew by night ...