’’She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses, ’’ cried the young Student; ’’but in my garden there is no red rose.’’ From her nest in the oak tree the nightingale heard him, and she looked out through the leaves, and wondered.
I lamented at my fate as I read these lines. As a student going through a new lesson, I was bored to read these lines. The red rose, crying student, and the overhearing nightingale sounded like a story from then a famous children’s book named Champak.
Boring! I thought as I read the short story by Oliver Wilde. But I had to read and prepare a summary of the new lesson as the homework. The English teacher was supposed to teach us the lesson the next day. But I read on, and soon I was gripped by the sheer intensity of love, the feeling a bird could feel.
The nightingale thinks, Here indeed is the true lover. What I sing of he suffers: what is joy to me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.
The nightingale then goes to the rose trees in the garden to ask for a red rose. She does not get any from the yellow rose tree and the white rose tree. Finally she goes to the red rose tree who says, My roses are red, as red as the feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean-cavern. But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year. If you want a red rose, you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s blood. You must sing to me with your chest against a thorn. You must sing to me as the thorn pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.
The nightingale feels that life is too much a price for a red rose and flies back. But as she watches the student cry for the probable loss of his love, the nightingale flies to the rose-tree, sets her chest against the thorn and sings all night long. As she sang, the thorn went deeper and deeper into her heart and her life-blood ebbed away from her. She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song.
At noon, the student opened the window and was surprised to see a beautiful red rose on the frosted rose tree. Below the tree was a dead nightingale. He plucked the rose and ran to the Professor’s house and asked the girl to go out with him for the dance. The girl said that the red rose would not match with her blue dress that she planned to wear for the dance. Also, someone else had sent her real jewels, which she said was more precious than a read rose.
Angrily, the student threw the rose into the street and a cart-wheel went over it, crushing it.
As the student walked away he thinks that love is an unpractical and a silly feeling which is not half as useful as logic, for love does not prove anything. So he decides to go back to philosophy and study Metaphysics. He returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read. Just as I was busy reading my lesson. :)
The only difference is that the student opened the book after learning a lesson in life, I closed mine after learning one!
I was glad that the English teacher asked us to read the lesson at home. Else, the whole class would have seen a weeping Sajitha in the class :(
The book
Oscar wilde has also written poetry, essays, and plays. The happy Prince and the other stories is a collection of short stories by Oscar Wilde. The stories in this book are: The happy prince, The selfish giant, The nightingale and the rose, The remarkable rocket, and The devoted friend. It was published in the year 1888. All the stories are nice, but the nightingale and the rose will always remain close to my heart. It is the story of sacrifice and love.
I am sorry, I could not but write the summery of a story. But you can read the rest from the book. ;)