"Thrush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our friendly pipes are long since burned out. Hark, how sweetly the tawny thrush in yonder thicket touches her silver harp for the evening hymn! I will follow the stream downward, but do you tarry here until the friend comes for whom you were waiting. I think we shall all three meet ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... mountain-song of the joyful water: a wren-robin-thrush on the dance down of a faun; till it was caught and muted, and the silver foot slid along the channel, swift as moonbeams through a cloud, with an air of 'Whither you will, so it be on'; happy for service as in freedom. Then the yard of the inn below, and the rillwater twirling rounded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was a little taken away by Leonard's speech. It was a sign, however, that her life was very quiet and peaceful, that she had leisure to think upon the thing at all; and often she forgot it entirely in her low, chanting song, or in listening to the thrush warbling out his afternoon ditty to his patient mate ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... for these old, seaside, eastern counties churches, relics of long past wealth and piety, are some of them among the most beautiful in the world. Then came the "Venite," of which here and there she sang a line or so, just one or two rich notes like those that a thrush utters before he bursts into full song. Rare as they might be, however, they caused those about her in the church to look at the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the hooping-cough, and rolled upon and crushed by a whole field of small diseases, that came trooping on each other's heels to prevent his getting up again. Some bird of prey got into his throat instead of the thrush; and the very chickens turning ferocious—if they have anything to do with that infant malady to which they lend their name—worried ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... thrush, that carols at the dawn of day From the green steeples of the piny wood; The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay, Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray, Flooding with melody the neighborhood; Linnet and meadow-lark, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... effect of being quickly tossed into form, which pleased him; as she slipped down the room before him to place him at table he saw that she was, as it were, involuntarily, unwillingly graceful. She made him think of a wild sweetbrier, of a hermit-thrush; but, if there were this sort of poetic suggestion in Cynthia's looks, her acts were of plain and honest prose, such as giving Westover the pleasantest place and the most intelligent waitress in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... torn with the storm, and two or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over them, addled and cold and forsaken, and my little gipsy heart cried over those poor little motherless things, for I was motherless too. And up in a tree I have heard a thrush singing the song of a seraph and I have said, as I looked at the eggs, "You would have been singers too, but ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... in ecstasy, picking great bunches of the flowers, and running from clump to clump with thrills of delight. Surely even Freckles's "Limberlost" could not be more beautiful than this. A persistent cuckoo was calling in the meadow close by; a thrush with his brown throat all a-ruffle trilled in a birch tree overhead, and a blackbird warbled his heart out among the hazel bushes by the fence. The girls went peeping here and there and everywhere in quest of birds' nests, and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... begun to be distressed by it. Her critics were driven to wild things for comparisons. She was as quick as a swallow; and yet a conscientious ornithologist would have likened her in her moments of contemplation to the thrush for demureness. And a robin hopping across a meadow, alert in all his mysterious senses, was not more alive than Phil in action. Her middle-aged aunts said she was impudent, but this did not mean impudent speech; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Baboo or Mohammedan Nawab, among other luxuries, keeps also his aviary. In these may be seen rare and expensive parrots, brought from the Spice Islands. They delight also in diyuls and shamahs. The latter is a smaller bird than our thrush, but larger than a lark; his breast is orange, the rest of his plumage black, and in song he is equal to our black-bird. The diyul also sings sweetly; he is about the same size as the shamah, his plumage black, with a white breast, and white tips to his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... knowledge. Persons of all nationalities, religions, and professions were admitted members; and it was continually enriched by the addition of curiosities, amongst which in particular were an herb which grew in the stomach of a thrush; the skin of a Moor tanned, with the beard and hair white; a clock, having movements directed by loadstone; an ostrich, whose young had been born alive; mummies; strange fish; and the hearts and livers of vipers. Likewise was the society endowed with ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... upon the outside of which the bird had fastened a wooden label from a near-by flower-bed, marked "Wake Robin." Still another nest I have seen built upon a large, showy foundation of the paper-like flowers of antennaria, or everlasting. The wood thrush frequently weaves a fragment of newspaper or a white rag into the foundation of its nest. "Evil communications corrupt good manners." The newspaper and the rag-bag unsettle the wits of the birds. The phoebe-bird is capable of this kind of mistake or indiscretion. All the past generations ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... veil on veil of evening The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far; A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are; The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers And heaven is lighting star ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... not moved here with the deep mellow note of the blackbird, poured out from beneath some low stunted bush; nor thrilled with the wild warblings of the thrush, perched on the top of some tall sapling; nor charmed with the blithe carol of the lark as we proceed early afield; none of our birds at all rivalling these divine songsters in realising the poetical idea of the "music of the grove;" while "parrots' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... grown quite hopeless about seeing his kind again. When there was a gap in the mountains, he could hear the querulous, senseless love-quarrel of flickers going on below him; passing a deep ravine, the note of the wood-thrush—that shy lyrist of the hills—might rise to him from a dense covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... black thrush, which had grown among starlings, listened diffidently to the words which came to his lips. Where did he get the power to compel the crowd to listen in ecstasy to his speech? Where did he get the power to force ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... planted: I did not count them. I made a rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground, the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The wind blew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in the woods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to give me back my peas? The fowls of the air have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was full of the drowsy sounds of evening; cattle returning after their day's freedom in the fields, cow-bells tinkling contentedly. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked; and on the gentle breeze came the song of a hermit thrush, with an undertone of cooing pigeons. The acrid smell of burning ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... may attach a different significance. But let not anything I have said be considered as reflecting upon the tales themselves, which indeed seem to me to be masterpieces of their kind. Personally my choice would rest on the last, "The Thrush in the Hedge," a simple history of how the voice of a young tramp was revealed by his chance meeting with a blind and drug-sodden fiddler who had once played in opera—a thing of such unforced art that its concluding pages, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... wild thrush lifts a note of mirth; The bronzewing pigeons call and coo Beside their nests the long day through; The magpie warbles clear and strong A joyous, glad, thanksgiving song, For all God's ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... for the first child endowed with this faculty not to speak in the presence of a companion similarly endowed, as it would be for a nightingale or a thrush not to carol to its mate. The same faculty creates the same necessity in our days, and its exercise by young children, when accidentally isolated from the teachings and influence of grown companions, will readily account for the existence ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... want for anything to eat or to wear, as we always had plenty of wild meat and plenty of fish, corn, vegetables, and wild fruits. I thought (and yet I may be mistaken) that my people were very happy in those days, at least I was as happy myself as a lark, or as the brown thrush that sat daily on the uppermost branches of the stubby growth of a basswood tree which stood near by upon the hill where we often played under its shade, lodging our little arrows among the thick branches of the tree and then shooting them down ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... digest all they eat?—To determine whether seeds would lose their vitality in passing through the digestive organs of birds, Kerner von Marilaun fed seeds of two hundred and fifty different species of plants to each of the following: blackbird, song thrush, robin, jackdaw, raven, nutcracker, goldfinch, titmouse, bullfinch, crossbill, pigeon, fowl, turkey, duck, and a few others; also to marmot, horse, ox, and pig, making five hundred and twenty separate experiments. As to the marmot, horse, ox, and pig, almost ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... a minute, I have heard it imitate the woodlark, chaffinch, blackbird, thrush, and sparrow.... Their few natural notes resemble those of the nightingale, but their song is of greater compass and more varied."—Ashe, Travels in America, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of bird—whether crow, bobolink, thrush or sparrow, the song or call is so exactly imitated as to deceive the most experienced naturalist, and even various birds themselves. Of course this requires practice, but even a tyro may soon learn to use the whistle to ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... wings are glistening in the beam Of the low sun, and mountain-tops are bright, Oh, let me, by the crystal valley-stream, Wander amid the mild and mellow light; And while the wood-thrush pipes his evening lay, Give me one lonely hour to hymn ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... SAINT NICHOLAS: Will you give me room to rectify a slip of the pen? My "Sing-away Bird," in your May number, is not a thrush, but a sparrow; and I ought to be ashamed of the mistake, for I knew he was a sparrow, and had already spoken of him, in a story in verse, published three ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... is fully as often known as the Golden-crowned Thrush, because of its brownish orange crown bordered with black. They are woodland birds exclusively and nest on the ground, arching the top over with rootlets or leaves, the nest proper being made of grasses and leaf skeletons. As they are concealed ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... some bird among the evergreens uttered a shrill, plaintive cry, rather than song—a sound which the thrush occasionally makes in the winter, and which seems to express something of fear, and pain, and impatience. "What does she say?—can you tell me?" ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... descried; And glades whose centuried oaks their branches laid O'er violet banks; and fruit trees, some snow-veiled Like bridesmaid, others like the bride herself Behind her white veil blushing. Glad, the thrush Carolled; more glad, the wood-dove moaned; close by A warbling runnel led them to the bay: Two chestnuts stood beside it snowy-coned: The banquet lay beneath them. Feasting o'er, The song succeeded. Boastful was the strain, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... more likely for water to change than for the mind of a woman; and is it not a young man without courage will not run the chance nine times? It's not nicer than you the swan is when he comes to the shore swimming; it's not nicer than you the thrush is, and he ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... very birds that are most friendly with man, and most helpful to him in his farming and fruit-growing business. The quail is about the only game bird that the cat affects seriously, and to it the cat is very destructive. It is the robin, catbird, thrush, bluebird, dove, woodpecker, chickadee, phoebe, tanager and other birds of the lawn, the garden and orchard that afford good hunting for ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... the simplicity of his diet, there is a remarkable saying of his upon record. In a great illness, when his appetite was almost gone, the physician ordered him a thrush. His servants, upon inquiry, found there was not one to be had for money, for the season was passed. They were informed, however, that Lucullus had them all the year in his menageries. This being reported to Pompey, he said, "Does Pompey's life depend upon the luxury of Lucullus?" ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... song of the cricket on the hearth, and the joyous hum of the bees among the poppies; we hear the light-winged lark gladden the morning with her song, and the silver-throated thrush warble in the tree-top. What are these, and all the sweet melodies we hear, but echoes from the realm of ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... certain trees by birds, the messengers of the gods, if not the gods themselves in disguise, by which this plant established itself in the branch of a tree. The mode of procedure, say the old botanists, was through the "mistletoe thrush." This bird, it was asserted, by feeding on the berries, surrounded its beak with the viscid mucus they contain, to rid itself of which it rubbed its beak, in the course of flying, against the branches of trees, and thereby inserted the seed which gave birth to the new ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... knowledge of this subject. "Then birds' nests be it." A long and animated conversation ensued: the bird-nesting of his boyhood, the blackbird's nest which his father had held him up in his arms to look at when a child at Wylam, the hedges in which he had found the thrush's and the linnet's nests, the mossy bank where the robin built, the cleft in the branch of the young tree where the chaffinch had reared its dwelling—all rose up clear in his mind's eye, and led him back to the scenes of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... 'Yesterday I went at twilight to the flowery meadows. There I heard a thrush singing, and I asked him, "Tell me, pretty song-bird, how shall I live most happily, as a maiden in my father's home or as a wife by my husband's side?" And the bird sang in reply, "The summer days are bright and warm, and so is a maiden's freedom; the winter is cold ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... Apparently some bird had driven its sharp beak through their shells, with the sole intention of destroying them, for no part of the contents of the eggs had been removed. It looked like a case of revenge; as if some thrush or warbler, whose nest had suffered at the hands of the jays, had watched its opportunity, and had in this way retaliated upon its enemies. An egg for an egg. The jays were lingering near, very demure and silent, and probably ready to join a ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... many red kangaroos (foxy), some very young, others very large; and he chased a jerboa, which escaped him. He also saw a new bird with a black crest, about the size of a thrush. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... she was surrounded by great moving masses that must crush her. And there was no escape. Save in the old obliviousness, the cold darkness she strove to retain. But the vicar showed her eggs in the thrush's nest near the back door. She saw herself the mother-thrush upon the nest, and the way her wings were spread, so eager down upon her secret. The tense, eager, nesting wings moved her beyond endurance. She thought of them in the morning, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... now Makes the thrush bush keep the cow Better than Scots or English kings Could do ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... island a thrush had begun to sing. Molly raised her head, as if to listen. The water lapped against ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... friends. Some of these friends went with her to the King's palace, and she now had no difficulty. She knew the language of those who lived in the forest, and she was no longer poor and lonely. So in the pages of this book you will learn of the lives of faithful dogs and huge buffaloes, and the brown thrush will sing for you a song full of meaning. The modest violet, the jack-in-the-pulpit, even the four-leaf clovers will tell you stories about the forest and the field, so that wherever you walk you will be surrounded by your friends. The magic glass of Merlin will unseal for you ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... some cry—a workman's whistle perhaps—high in mid-air. Now, among the trees, it was the thrush trilling out into the warm air a flutter of jubilation, but fear seemed to spur him, Fanny thought; as if he too were anxious with such joy at his heart—as if he were watched as he sang, and pressed by tumult to sing. There! Restless, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... world, and the meadow bends into billows, grey, silvery, and green, when a breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across it. The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught, and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... living, and could give those flashes and thrills to the old words which gave them almost the substance of flesh. She had no difficulty in writing, and covered a page every morning as instinctively as a thrush sings, but nevertheless, with all this to urge and inspire, and the most devout intention to accomplish the work, the book still remained unwritten. Papers accumulated without much furthering their ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... soft voice, for gray mist was descending, Slow rose the bard and retired from the hill, The blackbird's mild notes with the thrush's were blending, Oft scream'd the plover her wild notes and shrill, Yet still from the hoary bard, Methought the sweet song I heard, Mix'd with instruction and blended with woe; And oft as I pass along, Chimes in mine ear his song, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Timothy Turtle, who was not pleased when Bobby Bobolink moved to Cedar Swamp at haying time. But this was a very different sort of person. It was Jolly Robin's cousin, Mr. Hermit Thrush. Everybody called him "the Hermit" for short, because he was a quiet gentleman, who did not like to attract attention, but preferred to spend his time in a thicket on the edge of the swamp. He had a beautiful, sweet ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... joyfully returned home, and as he was riding through the forest he could perfectly understand all that the birds said. He heard a thrush say to a magpie: "How stupid men are! they cannot understand the simplest thing. It is now quite a year since the maiden was transformed into a water-lily, and, though she sings so sadly that anyone going over the bridge ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... into the sunlit orchard. In an apple-tree a thrush was singing; the gooseberries were overripe; beet-roots were ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... 1. The thrush is one of our best singing birds. It does not come near the house, like the wren, but it builds its nest in thickets and quiet places, where it is not liable to ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... birds right fairly Are singing ever early; The lark, the thrush, the nightingale, The make-sport cuckoo and the quail. These sing of Love! then why sleep ye? To love your sleep ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... but here the woodland deities are building night, block on block, for the cooling and soothing of the world. The heliographing ceases. The foam writing blurs in the shadows. Down long aisles of perfumed green the voice of the wood thrush rings mellow and serene. Here is a woodland chorister who sings of peace and calls to holy thoughts, voicing the evening prayer of the woodland world. As his angelus rings out I fancy all wild heads bowed in adoration. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... beauty of it!" she answered. "Your song left your soul as the thrush's leaves his throat. Should we prize the thrush's more if we came upon him ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... Embroider'd with gold, and with em'ralds inlaid. Then with all the gay troop to the shrubb'ry repair'd, Where the musical Birds had a concert prepar'd; A holly bush form'd the Orchestra, and in it Sat the Black-bird, the Thrush, the Lark, and the Linnet; A BULL-FINCH, a captive! almost from the nest, Now escap'd from his cage, and, with liberty blest, In a sweet mellow tone, join'd the lessons of art With the accents of nature, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... knew two tunes, one was "God save the Queen," and the other was not. And yet to-day I have as good a heart for singing as ever had any of the most famous songsters. In tune, out of tune, I must lift up my voice. It is as urgent a need for me as for any mellow thrush. For my heart—oh, rare case!—is fuller of joy than it can hold. It brims over. Roger is coming back. It is February, and he has been away nearly seven months. All minor evils and anxieties—Bobby's departure for Hong-Kong, Algy's increasing ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... seventy warblers are described by Davie in his "Nests and Eggs of North American Birds," and the Kentucky Warbler is recognized as one of the most beautiful of the number, in its manners almost the counterpart of the Golden Crowned Thrush (soon to delight the eyes of the readers of BIRDS), though it is altogether a more conspicuous bird, both on account of its brilliant plumage and greater activity, the males being, during the season of nesting, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... fellow is hardly to be found. But before some few daies are past, there's a great trial to be made of the Nurses experience and understanding; for, let them do what they will or can, the Child will not suck; yea, and what's worse, it hath gotten a lamentable Thrush. Alas a day what bad work is here again, the Nurse is so quamish stomackt that she cannot suck her Mistres, therefore care must be taken to find out some body or other that will come and suck the young womans breasts for twelve pence a time; or else ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... melody changed to a glad little lilting measure, as sweet as love itself. The sun was coming out again and the birds began to sing. There was the trill of a canary with the sun on its cage. There was the song of the thrush, the mocking-bird and the meadow lark. These blended finally into a melodious burst of chirping melody which seemed a chorus of the wild birds of the forest and glen. Then the lilting love measure again. It tore at the heart strings, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... road is long, but the end cometh at last. Friend, many a day have I been dying; for my sister, with whom I have played and been merry in the autumn tide about the edges of the stubble-fields; and we gathered the nuts and bramble-berries there, and started thence the missel-thrush, and wondered at his voice and thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk wheeled and turned over the hedges and the weasel ran across the path, and the sound of the sheep-bells came to us from the downs as we sat happy on the grass; and she is dead and gone from the earth, for she pined from ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... range of tints, so varied, so subdued, and so beautiful,—whether of pure white, like the Martin's, or pure green, like the Robin's, or dotted and mottled into the loveliest of browns, like the Red Thrush's, or aqua-marine, with stains of moss-agate, like the Chipping-Sparrow's, or blotched with long weird ink-marks on a pale ground, like the Oriole's, as if it bore inscribed some magic clue to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... singing when the orchards were in bloom, And the sweetness of his music made the peacock don his plume; Ay! I've heard cock-robin-redbreast chirping on a sunny day, And the skylark soaring skywards, merrily sing his festal lay; And the brown thrush and the bluebird thrill their little treble notes; All the woodland songsters pouring songs of gladness from their throats— But not one has touched so deeply, and not one has last so long As the ever ringing cadence ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... the windows, and there came in a spicy breath from the woods, together with the wild warble of a wood-thrush. It was so wild and sweet, they both were still to listen. The notes almost broke Diana's heart, but ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... his ear at fault that brook and breeze Sang in their saddest of minor keys? What was it the mournful wood-thrush said? What whispered the pine-trees overhead? Did he hear the Voice on his lonely way That Adam heard in the cool ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... A thrush has built its nest and laid three eggs at the junction of two scaffold poles where between fifty and sixty men are working on a new building at Northampton. The kind-hearted labourers were, we understand, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... so exactly that you believed you heard the people themselves. All alone he simulated the murmur of a crowd, and this gave him a right to the title of Engastrimythos, which he took. He reproduced all sorts of cries of birds, as of the thrush, the wren, the pipit lark, otherwise called the gray cheeper, and the ring ousel, all travellers like himself: so that at times when the fancy struck him, he made you aware either of a public thoroughfare filled with the uproar of men, or of a meadow loud with the voices of beasts—at ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Saint Simon, similarly prepared, forming the rear; and then on and on they went downward through the bushes, which ever and again brushed against their sleeves, and twice over startled and arrested by a sudden dash as of an enemy; but it was nothing worse than a startled bird, blackbird or thrush, roused from its roosting sleep by the ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... marge The sand-lark chaunts a joyous song; The thrush is busy in the Wood, And carols loud and strong. A thousand lambs are on the rocks, All newly born! both earth and sky Keep jubilee, and more than all, Those Boys with their green Coronal, They never hear the cry, That plaintive cry! which up the hill Comes from the ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... twice "the rush of mighty wings," but often a velvety rustle, long drawn out—sometimes quite near—with continual calls and chirps, and some song-notes. It all lasted from 12 till after 3. Once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable; I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wilson's thrush, white-crown'd sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the moving spirit of that little group of nature students. Phil and Martin might have never known an oriole from a thrush if she had not led them along the path of knowledge. Sometimes some of the intermediate Landis children joined the group. At times Lyman Mertzheimer sauntered along and invited himself, but his interest was feigned and his welcome was not ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... up into the blue sky overhead. Golden glistened the buttercups among the shamrock. From the ditches peeped forget-me-not. Honeysuckle scented the hedgerows. Around, above, and afar, carolled the linnet, the lark, and the thrush. All was colour and sunshine, scent and song, as the children of Lir drove onward ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... he admitted; "I don't really know much about Nature, but I love it, and I'm going to learn more. I know only the very common birds, and one other. Did you ever hear the hermit thrush sing?" ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... them, were very painful. I bound them up as well as I could—the water had washed away the blood and tended to stop inflammation. The sun rose high in the heavens. Not a sound was heard except the wild cry of the eagle or kite, blending with the song of the thrush and the mocking-bird, interrupted every now and then by the impudent observation of a stray parrot and the ominous rattle of a huge snake as it wound its way among the leaves. Every moment I expected to hear the ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... veritably alive to him, and he could tell her the secrets of that life. What perfume the rose was shedding—he smelt it about his palette; what hour of the clock the half-closed sunflower was striking; whence the robin and the thrush had come, and what bean fields they had flown over, and what cottage doors they had passed; of what the lizard was dreaming in south or east as he turned over on his slimy side—all were plain ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's note, the nuance of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight enough, inductive and deductive cunning enough, not only a meaning, but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... a wild white-throated thrush, That emptied his musical quiver With a charm and a spell over valley and dell On the banks of the Runaway River. "O sing! sing-away! sing-away!" Yet the song of the wild singer had The sound of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... dusky, And the hermit thrush and the black and white warbler Are singing and answering together. There is sweetness in the tree, And fireflies are counting the leaves. I like this country, I like the way it has, But I cannot forget my dream I had of ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... by weeds o'ergrown, Round-eyed they watch a thrush That breaks the noonday hush Dashing with zest a snail ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... enough in the street a minute ago, singing like a thrush," said Alec cheerily, though he did not fail to pull the table clear of the cupboard. "What is it, my Humming Bee?" he demanded, turning to Poluski. "Is it a surfeit of excitement, or ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from a wood ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... scraper. band, orchestral waits. vocalist, melodist; singer, warbler; songster, chaunter[obs3], chauntress[obs3], songstress; cantatrice[obs3]. choir, quire, chorister; chorus, chorus singer; liedertafel[Ger]. nightingale, philomel[obs3], thrush; siren; bulbul, mavis; Pierides; sacred nine; Orpheus, Apollo[obs3], the Muses Erato, Euterpe, Terpsichore; tuneful nine, tuneful quire. composer &c. 413. performance, execution, touch, expression, solmization[obs3]. V. play, pipe, strike up, sweep the chords, tweedle, fiddle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... are equally remarkable for their poetry and for their patriotism. I hope there is no need to commend to all Englishmen so passionate and heartfelt a record of love for England. It is in Home-Thoughts from Abroad, that we find the well-known and magical lines on the thrush:— ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... The thrush is a great source of amusement to the middle, and of profit to the lower, classes during its autumnal migration. Many families of Liege, Luxemburg, Luneburg, Namur, parts of Hainault, and Brabant choose this season for ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... think if I were a bird When winter comes I'd trust you, mother dear, For a few crumbs, Whether I sang or not, Were lark, thrush, or starling.— ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... monster grim, And whined for mercy unto him; Knights, constables, and men-at-arms Have quailed and whined in sleep's alarms. Thou wert not kind last night to make Me like a very coward shake— Shake like a thin red-currant bush Robbed of its fruit by a strong thrush. I felt this earth did move; more slow, And slower yet began to go; And not a bird was heard to sing, Men and great beasts were shivering; All living things knew well that when This earth stood still, ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... middle-window that opens on it, and now she stands in the blinding gleam, shading her eyes with her hand. It is late in July, and one may listen for a blackbird's note in vain. That song in the ash that drips a diamond-shower on the soaked lawn, whenever the wind breathes, may still be a thrush; his last song, perhaps, about his second family, before he retires for the season. The year we thought would last us out so well, for all we wished to do in it, will fail us at our need, and we shall find that the summer we thought was Spring's success ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... form, and the absence of prolonged and modulated harmony by the rich and melodious tones of their clear and musical calls. In the elevations of the Kandyan country there are a few, such as the robin of Neuera-ellia[1] and the long-tailed thrush[2], whose song rivals that of their European namesakes; but, far beyond the attraction of their notes, the traveller rejoices in the flute-like voices of the Oriole, the Dayal-bird[3], and some others equally charming; when at the first dawn of day, they wake ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... leaf is on a bush, In the time before the Thrush Has a thought about it's nest, Thou wilt come with half a call, Spreading out thy glossy breast Like a careless Prodigal; 20 Telling tales about the sun, When ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... another with scarlet, a woodpecker with variegated plumage of red, green, and yellow, and a small black bird with a single yellow feather under each wing. There are few singing birds, but one of the few has as sweet a note as that of the English thrush. There are very few varieties of moths ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the very lines of the poet's face were chiseled into beauty by those sculptors called thoughts and ideals. When Wordsworth speaks of the girl's beauty as "born of murmuring sound," the poet indicates his belief that the girl's long love of the sweet briar and the thrush's song, her tender care of her favorite flowers, had ended in the saturation of her own face with sweetness. Swiftly do we become like the thoughts we love. Scholars have noticed that old persons who have "lived long together, 'midst ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... excited in these mountain-holes, without taking into account the wearisomeness of hotel-life. From the very day after our arrival you took a dislike to the paper in our little salon, and its squares, I confess, are very ugly. In every square, a thrush stretching out its neck to peck a currant. Two hundred thrushes and two hundred currants—it was enough to weary you to death. Suddenly ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... hither and thither in his quest for trout and dace, while to the gentler-minded the modest flowers of the wild-wood appealed with singular directness. A partridge rose now and then from the thicket and whirred away, and with startled eyes the brown thrush peered out from the bushes. I see these pleasant scenes again, and I hear again the beloved sounds of old; and so with reverence and with welcoming I take up my task, for it was among these same Pelham hills ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... flame of the wild-fire abruptly ceased. The dawn arose red and broad in the east. The piles of dead beasts shone out black on the grey plain of the forest glade, and on the topmost bough of a pine tree a thrush began to sing. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... music beyond what M. Roussillon, a jack of all trades, had been able to teach her,—a few simple chords to accompany her songs, picked up at hap-hazard. But her voice, like her face and form, irradiated witchery. It was sweet, firm, deep, with something haunting in it—the tone of a hermit thrush, marvelously pure and clear, carried through a gay strain like the mocking-bird's. Of course Beverley thought it divine; and when a message came from Colonel Clark bidding him report for duty at once, he felt ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... standing round about the New Jerusalem. A warm breath of nature starts from the spicy islands south of the great Gulf, crosses it, then sweeps along Mississippi's mighty valley to the "happy hunting ground," bearing in its soft embrace birds of many wing—robin, bluebird, thrush, and sparrow. This breath melts the icy fetters of the streams, and they sing a sweet song of welcome. It enfolds the trees, and they put forth millions of little green ears to hear what the streams are saying. It fondly caresses the flower bushes, and they swell almost to bursting ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... inquired what was the matter? "Nothing," answered Wallace, forcing a smile, in which the agony of his mind was too truly imprinted; "but music displeased me." With this reply he disappeared. The excuse seemed strange but it was true; for she whose notes were to him sweeter than the thrush-whose angel strains used to greet his morning and evening hours-was silent in the grave! He should no more see her white hand upon the lute; he should no more behold that bosom, brighter than foam upon the wave, to him? A soulless sound, or a direful knell, to recall the remembrance ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... I smiled, but answered nothing. His arguments failed to convince me. Yet I loved to hear him talk—his voice was mellow as the note of a thrush, and his eyes had an eloquence greater than all speech. I loved him—God knows! unselfishly, sincerely—with that rare tenderness sometimes felt by schoolboys for one another, but seldom experienced ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... scene of the summer's studies was the brown thrush family. For some time the head of the household had made the grove a regular resting place in his daily round. He always entered in silence, alighted on the lowest limb of a tree, and hopped lightly, step by ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... height, with a long tuft of silken and silvery feathers down the back of its neck. Carlos knocked over a beautiful little bird with a chestnut-coloured head, a perfect heron in miniature, but only the size of a thrush. Lejoillie was delighted, and would have hugged us both as we ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... Laughing-Thrush found by Mr. Gammie on the 17th June near Darjeeling, below Rishap, at an elevation of about 3500 feet, was placed in a shrub, at a height of about six feet from the ground, and contained one fresh egg. It was a large, deep, compact cup, measuring about 5.5 inches in external ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... he called upon a wealthy young lady by the name of Silsby, who had the eyes of a gazelle, but "when I mentioned subscription it seemed to fall on her ears, not as the cadence of the wood thrush, or of the mocking bird does on mine, but as a shower bath ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... climbing above the treetops when the radio boys and Frank Brandon set out over the forest road, to the accompaniment of a full chorus of lusty feathered singers. Robin and starling and thrush combined to make the dewy morning gladsome, and the boys whistled back at them and wished Larry Bartlett were there to ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... spot. All around them was still and solitary; the groups of peasants had entered the Church, and nothing of life, save the cattle grazing in the distant fields, or the thrush starting from the wet bushes, was visible. The winds were lulled to rest, and, though somewhat of the chill of autumn floated on the air, it only bore a balm to the harassed brow and fevered veins of the Student; and Madeline!—she felt nothing but ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... near him, the boy became aware of fluttering noise. At first he could see nothing; then he saw a snake—a blue racer—writhing along the ground, while above it, making queer little noises of distress, hovered a brown wood-thrush. He stiffened. His flesh always crawled at the sight of a snake! Yet, leaning forward, he watched intently. The thrush, its body a blur of brown feathers, rose and fell in continuous attack. Then he saw ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... have fled in the semblance of a crow, scarcely finding rest; I have fled vehemently, I have fled as a chain, I have fled as a roe into an entangled thicket; I have fled as a wolf cub, I have fled as a wolf in a wilderness, I have fled as a thrush of portending language; I have fled as a fox, used to concurrent bounds of quirks; I have fled as a martin, which did not avail: I have fled as a squirrel, that vainly hides, I have fled as a stag's antler, of ruddy course, I have fled as iron in a glowing fire, I have fled as a spear-head, of ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... birds they distinguished the brown thrush, robin, turtle-dove, linnet, gold-finch, large and small blackbird, wren, and some others. As they came along, the whole party were of opinion that this river was the true Missouri; but Captain Lewis, being fully persuaded that it was neither ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... Again, the wood thrush was whistling with a sweet voice; the golden-crowned hammer plumed his feathers. In the thicket the pheasants clucked and the bright green humming birds flitted between the leaves; sometimes on the top of the pine tree a crow, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the cabbage fly, which would have afforded the birds many fine, rich meals. This comparatively feeble insect has been allowed by the throngs of birds to spread over the whole continent. A naturalist in one of the Western States had examined several species of the thrush, and found they had eaten mostly that class of insects ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... to the top of a timber under my porch. But she did not seem to lose her temper. She did not spitefully reclaim the straws and strings that would persist in falling to the porch floors, but cheerfully went away in search of more. So I have seen a wood thrush time after time carrying the same piece of paper to a branch from which the breeze dislodged it, without any evidence of impatience. It is true that when a string or a horsehair which a bird is carrying to its nest gets caught in a branch, the bird tugs at it again and again ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... manifestly the product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in April as the English thrush."—The Athenaeum. ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... their children to know when their children are thinking on their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its command, and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift for itself, much the kinder of the two, though sentimental people do shrug their shoulders at these unsentimental acts of the creatures who never wander from nature. Now, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these lines are traced, perhaps, Was once selected as the corner-stone 15 Of that [5] intended Pile, which would have been Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill, So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, And other little builders who dwell here, Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, 20 For old Sir William was a gentle Knight, Bred in this vale, to which he appertained [6] With all his ancestry. Then ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... Well! Here in the seventh court the mated doves are sitting comfortably in their snug dovecotes, billing and cooing and nothing else, and perfectly happy. And there is a parrot in a cage, chanting like a Brahman with a bellyful of curdled milk and rice. And here, again, is a talking thrush, chattering like a housemaid who spreads herself because somebody noticed her. A cuckoo, her throat still happy from tasting all sorts of fruit-syrups, is cooing like a procuress. Rows of cages are hanging from pegs. Quails are being egged on to fight. Partridges are being made to talk. Caged ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... out-of-doors all day under the shelter of the rocks, in the warm, southern nooks where the daisies were growing. The birds sang more blithely than they had ever done before; a lark overhead, flinging down his triumphant notes; a thrush whistling clearly in a hawthorn-bush hanging over the cliff; and the cry of the gulls flitting about the rocks; I could hear them all at the same moment, with the deep, quiet tone of the sea sounding below their gay music. Tardif was going out to fish, and I had helped him to pack ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... man was so eager for news that it was difficult to fix him to the object of our inquiries; and then he expatiated on the attractions of the neighbourhood, and the “chasse magnifique de grèves,” as he called thrush-shooting, in the country round, if we came to Porto-Torres in the month of December. We laughed at the idea of such sport; but I think it is said that the thrushes, fattening on the olive ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... farther, the wild mint and the centaurea perfume the shady nooks, the oaks and lime-trees arch their spreading branches, and the honeysuckle twines itself round the knotty shoots of the hornbeam, whence the thrush gives forth her joyous, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... merry brown thrush sitting up in the tree. He's singing to me! He's singing to me! And what does he say, little girl, little boy? "Oh, the world's running over with joy! Don't you hear? Don't you see? Hush! Look! In my tree I'm as happy ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... 300 feet in length at the base, and about 200 feet in breadth. Here we made preparations to halt for the night. The inhabitants of the island were a gorgeously-feathered old cock, which was kept as a propitiatory offering to the spirit of the island, a sickly yellow-looking thrush, a hammer-headed stork, and two fish-hawks, who, finding we had taken possession of what had been religiously reserved for them, took flight to the most western island, where from their perches they ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... time Rhoda and Cartwell, followed by many injunctions from Katherine, started off toward the irrigating ditch. At a slow pace they drove through the peach orchard into the desert. As they reached the open trail, thrush and to-hee fluttered from the cholla. Chipmunk and cottontail scurried before them. Overhead a hawk dipped in its reeling flight. Cartwell watched the girl keenly. Her pale face was very lovely in the brilliant morning light, though the somberness of her wide, gray ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... agitation and excitement, and the brother's and father's and sister's reception of her.... 'A stare or two at Fanny was all the voluntary notice that her brother bestowed, but he made no objection to her kissing him, though still entirely engaged in detailing further particulars of the "Thrush's" going out of harbour, in which he had a strong right of interest, being about to commence his career of seamanship in her at this very time. After the mother and daughter have received her, Fanny's seafaring father comes in, and does not notice her ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... came to a river in the deep woods. It was an exquisite bit of forest with the bells of a hermit thrush ringing in one of its towers. Their call and the low song of the river were the only sounds in the silence. The glow of the setting sun which lighted the western windows of the forest had a color like that of the music-golden. Long shafts of it fell through the tree columns upon the road here and ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... child was with us in the thickest part of the wood a long way off. She heard a bird sing, a mavis I believe—was it not a mavis? Very well, then she heard a thrush, and she turned in the direction whence the sound came. She went some distance, but could not come across it. When she turned back, the bear came out of the bushes, it attacked her, pulled her to the ground, and without doing her any harm, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Walwyn, though large, wainscoted, and well furnished, bore as pertinaciously the air of a cell as the appearance of Sister Cecily St. John continued like that of a nun. There was a large sunny oriel, in which a thrush sang merrily in a wicker cage; and yet the very central point and leading feature of the room was the altar-like table, covered with rich needlework, with a carved ebony crucifix placed on it, and on the wall above, quaint and stiff, but lovely-featured, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in painted plumage gay, In hundreds haunt the grove; O'er marsh and moor, the loon and heron, The coot and plover rove; But I miss the lark's glad matin song, And the thrush and blackbird's lay, The summer songsters, sweet and wild, In the Green Isle, far away. Along the blue horizon line The "bluffs" rise 'gainst the sky, But in dreams I see Old Erin's coast— Her mountains wild ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... through the sky, turtle-doves and linnets, fly! Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay, hither, thither, haste away! One and all, come, help me quick! haste ye, haste ye—pick, ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... considerable size, and splendid colouring, frequents the banks of the streams. A grey heron perches on the lower boughs of the trees, and fishes in the ponds. A small-winged woodpecker, and a large red-headed species, climb up and down the trees in sequestered places, and a thrush with a yellow beak and black head utters a sweet note among the bamboo groves and thickets; while owls, falcons, eagles and other birds of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year; when dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament,—when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton songsters make the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious little bob-lincoln revels among the clover-blossoms of the meadows,—all which happy coincidence ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... it asks, "the ant to build her nest? The bee her cells? the hermit thrush to sing? The dove to plume his iridescent breast? The butterfly to paint his ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... through the willow- sprays of them shinin' bars a layin' down on the gray twilight field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... loaded with Belgian and English honeysuckle, whose fragrant wreaths drooped till they touched the heads of all who entered. When Mrs. Murray and Edna ascended the steps and knocked at the open door, bearing the name "Allan Hammond," no living thing was visible, save a thrush that looked out shyly from the clematis vines; and after waiting a moment, Mrs. Murray entered unannounced. They looked into the parlor, with its cool matting and white curtains and polished old-fashioned mahogany furniture, but the room was unoccupied; then passing on to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... lay half awake, listening to the loud song of a thrush, full-throated and joyous, whistling away to his mate sitting close by in her clay cup of a nest upon four pale greenish-blue spotted eggs; and as he heard the notes he seemed to be in the old bedroom at Sir Henry Norland's, where he used to leave his window ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... late spring, "by the sea in the south," the swallows are still lingering around "white Algiers." In Mr. Gosse's "Return of [109] the Swallows," the northern birds—lark and thrush—have ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... here, one scarce knows how, from their foreign home; the buck-bean perchance grows in the water, or the Rhodora fixes here one of its shy camping-places, or there are whole skies of lupine on the sloping banks;—the catbird builds its nest beside us, the yellow-bird above, the wood-thrush sings late and the whippoorwill later, and sometimes the scarlet tanager and his golden-haired bride send a gleam of the tropics through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... this woman's voice rose suddenly as clear as the call of a thrush, and the hot space seemed to cool and the hot air to clean as she sang. She who sang was a girl of five and twenty, whom it had pleased to clothe her ripe womanhood in a boy's habit, that clasped her fine body as close as a second skin, and she might have passed for a man no otherwhere than in ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... called a rascal for following out natural and rascally inclinations. I first came to this conclusion one early morning, several years ago, as I watched an old crow diligently exploring a fringe of bushes that grew along the wall of a deserted pasture. He had eaten a clutch of thrush's eggs, and carried off three young sparrows to feed his own young, before I found out what he was about. Since then I have surprised him often at ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... and went with the ladies to the palace, which was built of blue marble, and the fairest that ever he saw. The Lady of Solace was fair likewise and of a marvellous sweet countenance, and her voice was soft like the voice of a thrush as she asked him what he wanted with her. At that the knight told his errand, and how the princess had bade him come to her, for she alone could help him to win through ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... not hurry himself, for there was plenty of time before five o'clock, and he stopped every few moments to examine some wayside plant, and to listen with the ardor of a true lover of nature to the merry voices of the thrush and blackbird ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... markings Were like those of the vesper sparrow. The young of birds always for a brief period repeat the markings of the birds of the parent stem from which they are an offshoot. Thus, the young of our robins have speckled breasts, betraying their thrush kinship. And the young junco shows, in its striped appearance of breast and back, and the lateral white quills in the tail, its kinship to the grass finch or vesper sparrow. The slate-color soon obliterates most of these signs, but the white quills remain. It has departed from the nesting-habits ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... yet all alive with woodsy sounds. Now a belated cicada swung his rattle as if in a fright, next a bull-frog, with hoarse kerchug! took a header for his evening bath. Once, later on, when the shadows were falling, a sleepy thrush settled upon a twig near by, and sang his good-night in sweetest tones. About this time he heard a farm-boy calling anxiously through the neighboring wood for the lost Sukey of the herd, and at times a dusty rumble announced a wagon jolting homeward over the unseen road away to his right. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... a soft, low, weird-like prelude: and then came a voice like that of a thrush, at which every other in the room seemed to hush instinctively. Each word ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... destitute of game; they came in sight of two grizzly bears, but could not get near enough for a shot; provisions, therefore, began to be scanty. They saw large flights of the kind of thrush commonly called the robin, and many smaller birds of migratory species; but the hills in general appeared lonely and with few signs of animal life. On the evening of the 14th September, they encamped on the forks of the Wind or Bighorn River. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the wild crab-apple trees I see from the hill.... The reedy song of the wood thrush among the thickets of the wild cherry.... The scent of peach leaves, the odour of new-turned soil in the black fields.... The red of the maples in the marsh, the white of apple trees in bloom.... I cannot find Him out—nor know ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... his tail, and looked sternly at the Philosopher. The Philosopher's countenance fell. A thrush, darting from an adjacent tree, seized the opportunity and the insect, and bore the latter away in his bill. At the same moment the shower prognosticated by the Sage burst forth, scattering the Butterflies in all directions, drenching the Philosopher, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... for ever fled, When wand'ring wild, as fancy led, I ranged the bushy bosom'd glen, The scroggie shaw, the rugged linn, And mark'd each blooming hawthorn bush, Where nestling sat the speckled thrush; Or, careless roaming, wander'd on Among the braes ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... during the night, and each tiny grass-blade glistened in the sun, bending under the weight of its liquid diamond. The birds were improvising a miniature symphony in the birches at the end of the garden; the song-thrush warbled with a sweet melancholy his long-drawn contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was chosen. The nightingale proposed the lark, the thrush, the blackbird and the bullfinch as experts in singing, and the frog proposed the starling, the linnet, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... changing shadow upon yon deep pool, where a grand old beech, festooned with clematis, leans its gray trunk far over as if to bless the stream whose waters, bubbling swiftly over the pebbles a little higher up, calm themselves here to rest in peace. The wood-thrush sends its plaintive, solitary note of silver-globuled melody from the inmost forest. No other sound, save when a wagon now and then rolls its quick rumble across a bridge, and then is gone like some self-conscious intruder. But luxury like this is the very thief of time. Before ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... from the lady's toils the wizard clears His limbs, as thrush escapes the fowler's snare; With him as well his castle disappears, And leaves the prisoned troop in open air; From their gay lodgings, dames and cavaliers, Unhoused upon that desert, bleak and bare. And many ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... ancient hemlock. It is the solemn call of the owl, as he sits among the limbs, looking out from between the branches with his great round grey eyes. Listen again and you will hear the voice of the catbird, the brown thrush, the chervink, the little chickadee, the wood robin, the blue-jay, the wood sparrow, and a hundred other nameless birds that live and build their nests and sing among these ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate,—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which, methinks, I ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... nest, robin red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! Sing, birds, in ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... tinkle of a cowbell sounded faintly; a thrush sang; the sun, dropping low toward the wooded crest of the opposite mountain, cast a golden glow over valley and slope. The air was filled with the drowsy hum and stirring of tiny unseen creatures, the birches that fringed the glade leaned and whispered. The three girls sat silent, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... catch a bird that I saw hovering over the water, and every now and then darting down into it! It was all over a mixture of the most beautiful green and blue, with some orange color. It was somewhat less than a thrush, and had a large head and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... piece in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child, or party so affected to eat, doth certainly cure the thrush. From an experienced midwife. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... first music she had ever heard, "except whistlin'," but there had been a great deal of "whistlin'" about the cabin up Lone River; whistling of robins in spring—nothing sweeter—the chordlike whistlings of thrush and vireo after sunset, that bubbling "mar-guer-ite" with which the blackbirds woo, and the light diminuendo with which the bluebird caressed the air after an April flight. Perhaps Joan's musical faculty was less untrained than any other. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... newspapers, like that of eminent or notorious people to a watering-place, as the first authentic notification of spring. And such his appearance in the orchard and garden undoubtedly is. But, in spite of his name of migratory thrush, he stays with us all winter, and I have seen him when the thermometer marked 15 degrees below zero of Fahrenheit, armed impregnably within, like Emerson's Titmouse, and as cheerful as he. The robin has a bad reputation among people who do not value themselves less ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... differently when I repeat it. You lose the sweet shyness of her face, the appeal in her eyes not yet dry, and that soft minor chord in her voice that reminds me now of a wood-thrush. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson |
