The Nightingale and the Rose is an allegory toselflessness and

selfishness combined, and how one affects the other. In this story,
a young student becomessmitten by a young woman who"would
only dance with him if he brought her red roses".The cries of the
young man, who only had white roses in his garden was heard by
a nightingale, who thought he has finally met a"true lover."
Hence, the Nightingale sacrifices himself by pressing his heart
against the thorn of awhite rose,which is symbolic of Wilde's
paradigm that love must be sacrificial, maddening, anddeadly if it
must be. In the end, we realize that both the young woman and the
student were the typical Victorian stereotypes that Wilde detested
so much: The holier-than-thou types who claim and swearby their
feelings, emotions, and beliefs only to deny themlater.This means
the nightingale made its sacrifice in vain, and that its love may
very well be unique(and alone) in the world.
This work byWilde has been critically reviewed for the possibility that
this was Wilde's own cries and inner battles trying to "find new
sensations". Wilde was notorious for saying howall sensations must be
experienced freely, as his mentor Walter Pater would also avow.

The sacrificial nature of the Bird reflects Wilde himself during his last
years, when he sacrificed his freedom for the love of his male lover,
against the statutes of Victorian Law. Like the bird, Wilde also did it
maybe all in vainlife went on as usual, even after he tried to do the
heroic act of working toward acceptance in society