Short Story:-The Nightingale and Rose by Oscar Wilde

The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde 

The Nightingale and the Rose is about a Student who is in love with a woman, a Professor’s daughter. She has told him she will dance with him if he brings her red roses, but the Student’s garden does not contain any roses. The Nightingale listens to the lovelorn student lamenting his hopeless love, and feels sorry for him. She knows how rare true love is, and she knows it when she sees it. The Prince is giving a ball the following night, but although the Student and the woman he loves will both be there, she will not dance with him without a red rose.

A Lizard, a Butterfly, and a Daisy all tell the Nightingale that it’s ridiculous that the young Student is weeping over a red rose, but the Nightingale sympathises with him. She flies to a nearby grass-plot and asks the Rose-tree to give her a red rose, and in exchange she will sing for it. But the Rose-tree says it produces only white roses, so cannot give her what she wants. It suggests going to the Rose-tree by the sun-dial.

The Nightingale proposes the same deal with this tree, but it replies that it only produces yellow roses, so cannot help. However, it directs her to the Rose-tree right under the student’s window. However, although this Rose-tree does produce red roses, the winter has frozen its branches and it cannot produce any.

The Nightingale asks if there is any way she can get one red rose for the Student. The tree replies that the only way of producing a red rose is for the Nightingale to sing by moonlight while allowing a thorn to pierce her heart, so her blood seeps through to the tree and produces a red rose. The Nightingale agrees to this, because she believes Love to be more valuable than Life, and a human heart more precious than hers.

She goes and tells the forlorn Student what she is going to do, but he doesn’t understand her, because he only understands things written down in books. The Oak-tree, in which the Nightingale has built her nest, does understand her words, however, and requests one last song from the Nightingale. She sings, but the Student, taking out his notebook, is rather unimpressed, because the bird’s song has no practical use.

That night, the Nightingale sings with her heart against the thorn, until it eventually pierces her heart while she sings of love. Her heart’s blood seeps into the tree and produces a red rose, but by the time the flower is formed the Nightingale has died.

The next morning, the Student opens his window and sees the red rose on the tree, and believes that it is there thanks to mere good luck. Plucking the rose, he goes to the house where his sweetheart lives, and presents her with the red rose. But another suitor, the Chamberlain’s nephew, has sent her jewels, which are more valuable than flowers, so she says she will dance with him instead at the ball that night.

The Student denounces the girl for her fickleness, and she calls him rude. He throws the red rose into the gutter, where a cart rolls over it. As he walks home, he decides to reject Love in favour of Logic and Philosophy, which have a more practical use.