Fragment 39 (Voigt 136)
39 · Voigt 136Spring’s messenger, the sweet-voiced nightingale.
Ἦρος ἄγγελος ἰμερόφωνος ἀήδων.
The dear good angel of the spring,
The nightingale.
— Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, Act ii.
The tawny sweetwinged thing
Whose cry was but of Spring.
— Swinburne, Songs of the Springtides, p. 52.
Quoted by the Scholiast on Sophocles, Electra, 149, ‘the nightingale is the messenger of Zeus, because it is the sign of Spring.’