"Thrush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how I long to quit the throng Of human forms and faces: The vain delights, the empty shows, The toil and care bewild'rin', To feel once more the sweet repose Calm Nature gives her children. At times the thrush shall sing, and hush The twitt'ring yellow-hammer; The blackbird fluster from the bush With panic-stricken clamour; The finch in thistles hide from sight, And snap the seeds and toss 'em; The blue-tit hop, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... warmth of the sun that my body embraces, For the cool of the waters that run through the shadowy places, For the balm of the breezes that brush my face with their fingers, For the vesper-hymn of the thrush when the twilight lingers, For the long breath, the deep breath, the breath of a heart without care,— I will give thanks and adore thee, God of ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... (the robin) calling his mate. He says he has just found something good to eat." Or "Listen to Oopehanska (the thrush); he is singing for his little wife. He will sing his best." When in the evening the whippoorwill started his song with vim, no further than a stone's throw from our tent in the woods, she ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... A thrush began to sing somewhere in the trees. Here and there a rose scattered its petals on the breeze. Some low-lying fleecy clouds rose to meet the sun, broke up into airy flakes and ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... her companion advanced towards the well known spot. The mellow voice of the thrush, and the clear pipe of the blackbird, diversified at intervals with the tender notes of the nightingale, formed the most agreable natural concert. The breast of Delia, framed for softness and melancholy, was filled ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... Are there streams like ours? Is God white-headed, or youthful and strong? Hang there the rainbows o'er happy bowers? Are there sun and moon and the thrush's song?" ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... 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 ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... provide himself with a good sword. So he set off in another direction, and lost himself in the woods, and had to pass the night on the wet grass under a fir-tree, which he did not at all relish. Next morning he started off again early, and a thrush sang to him, and directed him to turn to the west. He sprang forward with renewed energy and soon found himself in the open country, where he encountered an old woman,[45] who gave him minute instructions for finding his ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... linnets from the hedges green, Blackbird and lark and thrush and dove, And every nightingale And cuckoo tells its tale, And all they ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... my ears that made me feel that I was not quite alone in this desolate swamp. The gray squirrels scolded among the tree-tops; robins, the brown thrush, and a large black woodpecker with his bright red head, each reminded me of Him without whose notice not a sparrow ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... opposite direction. I travelled more quickly than usual, the evening was calm and still, twilight fell over the wood. At a jutting point of the bank I seemed to hear an unusual sound, and held my breath to listen. But the wood was still sad and dreary. "Perhaps it was a warbler or a thrush," I thought, and walked on. A little later I pulled up again. This time I heard quite plainly a man's voice and the low of a cow. I quickly pulled on my wet boots and rushed into the wood. A flock of sheep watched by its shepherd was feeding on an open glade ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... which floated to the river-bank. As winter advances, butterflies gradually disappear: one species (a Vanessa) lingers; three others have vanished since I came. Mocking-birds are abundant, but rarely sing; once or twice they have reminded me of the red thrush, but are inferior, as I have always thought. The colored people all say that it will be much cooler; but my officers do not think so, perhaps because last winter was so unusually mild,—with only ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... we not wait for the stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me. I have met the gray-cheeked thrush in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of the cedar-bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cheery time can dispel. A bird's song contains ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... that springs frae the dews o' the lawn [lark] The shepherd to warn o' the grey-breaking dawn, And thou, mellow mavis, that hails the night-fa', [thrush] Give over for pity—my ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... evening, fluted as April by a thrush in the lilacs, Prosper and the Countess walked together on the terrace. A guard or two, pike in hand, lounged by the balustrade; the deer-hound, with his muzzle between his paws, twitched his ears or woke to snap at a fly: it seemed as if the earth, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... its long, delicate white root dangling like a needle, and pot it in a small paper pot. When two score pots are ready, I set them in a cold-frame, sprinkle them, stretch the kink out of my back, listen to the wood-thrush a moment (he came on the fourteenth and is evidently planning to nest in our pines), and then return to my job. Patience is required to pot four or five hundred snapdragons; but patience is required, after all, in most things that are rightly performed. I think as I work of the glory ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... 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 ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... the fields and woods, song sparrows flitted busily among the hedges and sang their delicious, "Maids, maids, maids, hang on your tea kettle-ettle-ettle!" From the densest portions of the woods above the quarry a thrush sang—all nature seemed atune with Phoebe's mood, blithe, ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... In the open pastures the heat still quivers, 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. Certainly the wood thrush's call touches that chord in the human ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Throat gorgxo. Throb bati, palpiti. Throbbing bato—ado, ekbato. Throe agonio. Throne trono. Throng (crowd) amaso. Throttle sufoki. Through tra. Throw jxeti. Throw across transjxeti. Throw out eljxeti. Thrush turdo. Thrust pusxegi, enpusxi. Thumb dika fingro. Thump frapegi, bategi. Thunder tondri. Thunderstorm fulmotondro. Thunderstruck fulmofrapa. Thursday jxauxdo. [Error in book: jauxdo] ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... nature, classic and medieval heroes, problems of society, questions of science, the answer of faith,—almost everything that could interest an alert Victorian mind found some expression in his poetry. It ranges in subject from a thrush song to a religious philosophy, in form from the simplest love lyric to the labored ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... 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 grunts and cries of the redskins, as with tomahawk in hand they came eagerly ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... him I held myself softly still and felt just that. I did not know he was a robin. The truth was that he was too young at that time to look like one, but I did not know that either. He was plainly not a thrush, or a linnet or a sparrow or a starling or a blackbird. He was a little indeterminate-colored bird and he had no red on his breast. And as I sat and gazed at him he gazed at me as one quite without prejudice unless it might be with the slightest ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... flocks of thousands—flying low and following the line of hill and vale, whilst emitting a curious sound from the movement of so many wings. In the Deres would be seen an occasional blackbird and thrush, which were later on joined by the robin. On one occasion a visitor from the Balkans—an eagle with a very large spread of wings—hovered over Cheshire Ridge and, by a few, was thought to be an aeroplane flying ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... propagate by rubbing the glutinous berries and their seeds on the under side of a small branch at the angle where it joins a limb. There it will often flourish unless snapped up by a wandering missel-thrush. It is very slow in growth, but, when it attains a fair size, is strikingly pretty in winter when the tree is otherwise bare, for its peculiar shade of faded green, with its white and glistening berries, makes an unusual effect—quite different from that of any other green thing. It is ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... plain-tunes in church without taking any particular thought about it; and he sang easily, with a clear young voice which had a full, flute-like note in it like the high, sweet song of a thrush singing in deep woods. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... 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, delicately ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... linger there, listening to the pleading passion of the blackbird's note, the thrush's call to joy and hope. He loved her gentle ways. From the bold challenges, the sly glances of invitation flashed upon him in the street or from some neighbouring table in the cheap luncheon room he had always shrunk confused ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... tender corn is springing, And the merry thrush is singing; When the swallows come and go, On light wings flitting to and fro— Thou wilt think ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... nor does it, like that bird, run up the trunks of trees, but industriously, after the manner of a willow-wren, hops about, and searches for insects on every twig and branch. In the more open parts, three or four species of finches, a thrush, a starling (or Icterus), two Opetiorhynchi, and several hawks ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... differ considerably, and both species build in holes or conceal their nests. The female blackbird (Turdus merula) differs much, the female ring- ouzel (T. torquatus) differs less, and the female common thrush (T. musicus) hardly at all from their respective males; yet all build open nests. On the other hand, the not very distantly-allied water-ouzel (Cinclus aquaticus) builds a domed nest, and the sexes differ about as much as in the ring-ouzel. The black ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... generally eaten half raw. The best way of dressing them is to stuff them into a roll, scooped of it's crum; to baste them well with butter, and roast them, until they are brown and crisp. The ortolans are kept in cages, and crammed, until they die of fat, then eaten as dainties. The thrush is presented with the trail, because the bird feeds on olives. They may as well eat the trail of a sheep, because it feeds on the aromatic herbs of the mountain. In the summer, we have beef, veal, and mutton, chicken, and ducks; which last are very fat, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... I am still here, a pledge from my brothers. When yon dim grey woods grow green, and the brown hollows are yellow with kingcups and primroses, the old melody you know so well shall begin again, and the thrush from the oak top shall answer to the goldentoned blackbird in the copse, saying—'Our mother is not dead, but has been sleeping. She is awake again—let ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... they were about, the two "jontlemen" had taken up his Majesty's vessel under my command, had turned it bottom up with several shakes, to clear it of the water and sand, and with as little difficulty as a farmer's boy would have turned upside down a thrush's cage, in order to cleanse it. After this operation had been performed, they righted it, and one laying hold of the bow, and the other the stern, they swung it between them, as two washerwomen might ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... say against every one, but she made herself especially merry over a good king who stood quite high up in the row, and whose chin had grown a little crooked. "Well," she cried and laughed, "he has a chin like a thrush's beak!" and from that time he got ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... our lifetime we spent three delicious days in the Isle of Wight, and then crossed the water to Portsmouth. After taking a turn on the ramparts in memory of Fanny Price, and looking upon the harbor whence the Thrush went out, we drove over Portsdown Hill to visit the surviving member of that household which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... 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, very pugnacious, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... trunk of a fallen tree, in the topmost corner of the field. In the hedge, close at hand, was a commotion of birds. In the elm tree, a little further away, a thrush was singing. A soft west wind blew in their faces; the air immediately around them was filled with sunlight. Yet almost to their feet stretched one of those great arms of the city—a suburb, with its miles of villas, its clanging ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... away with her hand, turning her face to one side, and leaned back in her cushions, while Ellery waited, hardly breathing. There was a deep hush on the opal waters under the April morning sky, and no sound but the far-off note of a wood-thrush. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... There was a thrush singing in the birches and a sound of bees in the air, when George prayed in a low, soft voice, with a little ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... in search of the "smiddy." Indeed he began to suspect that the worthy hermit was deceiving him, and was only fully convinced at last when he saw one of the birds. It was pure white, about the size of a thrush, and had a curious horn or fleshy tubercle ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... then, still holding herself proudly, and with the air of a queen graciously condescending to bestow a favor upon a suppliant, but also with a smile of radiant sweetness, she spoke, and her voice was like the song of the thrush ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... investigation, such as the relative numbers of the two sexes, and especially on polygamy. Can you aid me with respect to birds which have strongly marked secondary sexual characters, such as birds of paradise, humming-birds, the rupicola or rock-thrush, or any other such cases? Many gallinaceous birds certainly are polygamous. I suppose that birds may be known not to be polygamous if they are seen during the whole breeding season to associate in pairs, or if the male incubates, or aids in feeding ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... young couple, true lovers of the simple life, took upon themselves the vows which united them until "death itself should part." The rustle of the leaves in the treetop murmured nature's sweet benediction, while the bluebird, the robin, and the thrush ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... wayfarers, and there must be one, full of food, and wine, and physic, and sweet, health-restoring cordials. And the birdies must have a breakfast daily. Dorothy, the cookmaid, must boil bread in skimmed milk, and throw it on the lawn; then Master Robin and Master Thrush and Mistress Jenny Wren will all feast together. I once saw the little princes, in King Edward's time, feed the birdies thus; and so did Willie Shakespeare, in Stratford town.' Alas, I thought, alas, all is now too plain. This child must have been akin to some great scholar, who taught ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... brother-in-law, partly to let her see the capital, but still more to carry out an artful scheme of his own. Descoings had no children. Madame Descoings, twelve years older than her husband, was in good health, but as fat as a thrush after harvest; and the canny Rouget knew enough professionally to be certain that Monsieur and Madame Descoings, contrary to the moral of fairy tales, would live happy ever after without having any children. The pair might therefore become attached ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... partridge drum in the woods; He heard the woodcock's evening hymn; He found the tawny thrush's broods, And the shy hawk did wait for him. What others did at distance hear And guessed within the thicket's gloom Was shown to this philosopher, And at his bidding ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... eyes from him. Something told her that he knew her secret, or part of it. Her heart was fluttering like a caged thrush. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... and incessant as it balanced on a rosin-weed, of the lark bunting and lark finch, poured forth melodiously; twittering blue-birds looked into the air and back to their perch atop the dead cottonwood as they gathered luckless insects; the brown thrush, which sings the night through in the bright starlight, rivaled the robin and grosbeak as Philip gazed over the blue-skyed, green-grassed land. The blue-green of the ocean had not so fascinated as the mysticism of this broad view. He was glad to be alive, and anxious to be in the riot of life on ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... is difficult to distinguish male from female birds when young; but the darkest generally are males. Their food consists of German paste, bread, meat, and bits of apple. The same treatment as given for the thrush (See par. 2456) applies ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... top o' t'grass, Clois to a runnin' brook, An' harken'd t'watter wagtails sing Wi' t'sparrow, thrush, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... mother, accepting Dumps's proffered arm; and the little party entered the hackney-coach that was to take them to the church; Dumps amusing Mrs. Kitterbell by expatiating largely on the danger of measles, thrush, teeth-cutting, and other interesting diseases to which children ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... she tries with song of thrush Once more those hearts to move, I've seen her oft relentless crush,— My bud still blooms forever fresh— It is the Rose ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... even for man's own boasted powers. Set the man who has been accustomed to make engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly and seriously modified without ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... and thrush Shall hail the rising day, Nor warble on their native bush, Nor charm me with ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... about 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 an impulse toward mutiny ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... prided himself on his special 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 his boyhood at Callerton and ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... rarely see. But late some afternoon, when the sun is lifting along the trunks of the hardwood forest, if you are very lucky and very quiet, you will hear him far in the depth of the blackest swamps. Musically expressed, his song is very much like that of the wood thrush—three cadenced liquid notes, a quivering pause, then three more notes of another phrase, and so on. But the fineness of its quality makes of it an entirely different performance. If you symbolize the hermit thrush by the flute, you must call the wood thrush a chime of little tinkling ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... clean, one would readily share with them, for there would be enough for all; but the dainty little epicures puncture an indefinite number of berries, merely taking a sip from each. Then the wasps and bees come along and finish the clusters. The cardinal, cat-bird, and our unrivalled songster the wood-thrush, all help themselves in the same wasteful fashion. One can't shoot wood-thrushes. We should almost as soon think of killing off our Nilssons, Nevadas, and Carys. The only thing to do is to protect the clusters; and this ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... beautiful as it all was in theory, wonderful as was the indescribable power of Islam, it gave few, if any, of its children the true conception of God. They learned nothing of the tender Father, of the beauty of Aton. In Islam there is no consciousness of God in the song of the thrush to its mate, no sacredness in the bud of a lily. In spite of all the exquisite names by which a Moslem addresses his God, His seat is ever in the high heavens, He still remains to him the Omnipotent God of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... the dawn while men-folk sleep, Unseen spreads on the light, Till the thrush sings to the coloured things, And earth ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... especially beautiful songs are the Thrushes, which include the Robin and the Bluebird, the finest singer in this family probably being the Hermit Thrush. In the Southern States there is no more popular singer among the birds than the Mockingbird. But it should be remembered that a bird's song cannot be separated from the associations which it calls up in one's memory. So that the performance ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... 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 there appears ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... continued, 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
... 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 singing a ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... 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 ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... mountain villages were celebrating the Easter festival with candle-lit processions and with singing. The words of the Easter song floated across the blue spaces. "The Royal Banners forward go," came the faint chant, and, mingling with the vesper song of thrush and nightingale, lulled the tired travellers ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... voice ceased, and the angel was gone, and when I looked up there was naught but the growing dawn across yon window, and the voice of the thrush that sings outside." ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... offered company, and they set out in the same direction that Peggy had taken. Margaret had been in the oak woods several times with Peggy, and thought she might very likely find her there; but no one answered her call; only the trees rustled, and the hermit-thrush called in answer, deep in some thicket far away. Presently, as they walked, there shot through the dark oak branches a sunny gleam, a flash of green and gold. They pressed forward, and in another moment stood on the edge of the quaking bog. But they had not been warned; neither had they Peggy's ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... He realized that he had plunged far into the Black Forest. Here it was gloomy; a dreamy quiet prevailed, that deep calm of the wilderness, unbroken save for the distant note of the hermit-thrush, the strange bird whose lonely cry, given at long intervals, pierced the stillness. Although Isaac had never seen one of these birds, he was familiar with that cry which was never heard except in the deepest woods, far from the haunts ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... by the blue and scarlet plumage of the feathered tribe among the branches of the trees, some with pleasant trilling voices, and others uttering harsh, shrill, unfamiliar cries. The variety of birds was a very marked feature of this tropical region. The keen voice of the Ceylon thrush rang in our ears like the scream of a young child. Many other smaller birds were seen in rainbow feathers; and a sparrow, like his English brother, except that the Ceylon species wear a white ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... disclose to the fond deceiving breeze, with many a glimpse to attract a glance, all the cream of their summer intentions. And in full enjoyment of all these doings, the poet of the whole stood singing—the simple-minded thrush, proclaiming that the world was good and kind, but himself perhaps the kindest, and his nest, beyond doubt, the best ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... That snuffed round every home and was not seen, There should be some to watch and keep alive All beautiful beliefs. And such was that,— By solitary shepherd first surmised Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid 140 Of royal stirp, that silent came and vanished, As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared Confess a mortal name,—that faith which gave A Hamadryed to each tree; and I Will hold it true that in this willow dwells The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, Of ancient Hospitality, long since, With ceremonious thrift, bowed out ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... all the birds With full cry were singing; There the blackbird's melody Sweet and true was ringing; Wood-dove, lark, and thrush on high Jocund anthems flinging, With the nightingale, who still To ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... and takes the scaly fry. Meanwhile each hollow wood and hill Doth ring with lowings long and shrill, And shady lakes with rivers deep Echo the bleating of the sheep; The blackbird with the pleasant thrush And nightingale in ev'ry bush Choice music give, and shepherds play Unto their flock some loving lay! The thirsty reapers, in thick throngs, Return home from the field with songs, And the carts, laden with ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... 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
... the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard's distance, looking for worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them. I remember a thrush had the confidence to snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a piece of cake that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. When I attempted to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavoring ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... plumage. And what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me. I have met the Gray-cheeked Thrush (Turdus aliciae) in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of the Cedar-Bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A bird's song contains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... nose, poring over a gazette by a feeble oil lamp. The old 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
... unseen, and to kill the 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 sly and ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... neared the place he put his fingers to his mouth and blew a whistle of three quick notes that reminded me of the piping of a thrush. And immediately I started back: a black man had risen almost from beneath our feet. So well hidden was he in a low-growing bush that we might have passed within a yard of him and been none the wiser. I perceived that he carried a long knife ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... draw much of their subsistence from them. In the woods, the principal sorts are large brown hawks or eagles; crows, nearly the same as ours in England; yellowish paroquets; and large pigeons. There are also three or four small birds, one of which is of the thrush kind; and another small one, with a pretty long tail, has part of the head and neck of a most beautiful azure colour; from whence we named it motacilla cyanea. On the shore were several common and sea gulls; a few black oyster-catchers, or sea-pies; and a pretty plover ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... 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 of the tempo, filled out the pauses ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... air, and the goldfish swam among the water-lily leaves; ants left their nests and foraged about the paths, the butterflies danced and fluttered over the flowers, which lifted their heads as though to drink in the rays of the sun. In every tree in the garden a thrush woke up and began to sing; sparrows chirped, jays screamed, blue-tits chattered, and the chiff-chaff uttered his strange note. In the woods a cuckoo called and blackbird fluted to blackbird in the hedge. In the stables the ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... spirit to the day of his death, as old at his birth as the classic source from which he sprang, he invented a method essentially his own, in which to express his new-old message. In our work-a-day, materialistic age, like a thrush singing in a boiler-shop, he is the quiet but triumphant vindication of the truth that all great art has its roots firmly implanted in the earth of Hellenic civilization, though its expression may be, as in Corot's case, through an art ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... inspiration of the poet in all ages. And this is not all that we owe to sex. In all organic life we find the same force at work. The song of the nightingale is a call to his mate, the chirp of cricket, the song of the thrush, the note of the grasshopper, every charming voice in wild nature are notes of love, and were it not for these, field and forest would be silent. Among the animals we can trace the beauty of form and of covering to ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... the river's stony marge The sand-lark chants 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 ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... dead, I'd love to see An amber thrush hop over me And bend his ear, as he would know What I am whispering down below. May many a song-bird find his bread Upon my grave when ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... could not, because that my eye Grew love-idle among the rich blooms; and the earth Held me down with its coolness of touch, and the mirth Of some bird was above me,—who, even in fear, Would startle the thrush? and methought there drew near A form as of AEgle,—but it was not the face Hope made, and I knew the witch-Queen of that place, Even Circe the Cruel, that came like a Death, Which I fear'd, and yet fled not, for want of my breath. There was thought in her face, and her eyes ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... said]: "He really has music in him. Read his poem "The Thrush" and you will see it. Tennyson said to me," [he added], "that Browning had plenty of music IN him, but he could ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of the average brown, had a rough 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
... going of the birds is more or less a mystery and a surprise. We go out in the morning, and no thrush or finch is to be heard; we go out again, and every tree and grove is musical; yet again, and all is silent. Who saw them ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... path, or to note the pretty moss on the tree he climbs for safety. But the novel by comparison is like breakfasting in the open air on a summer morning; nothing is irrelevant if the waiter's mood is happy, and the tapping of the thrush upon the garden path, or the petal of apple-blossom that floats down into my coffee, is as relevant as the egg I open or the bread and butter I bite. And all sorts of things that inevitably mar the tense illusion which is the aim of the short story—the introduction, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... 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, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... food failed us in the woods; but I acquired other means of procuring it. Encouraged by the success of my fishing, I made a sort of net from the filaments of the bark of a tree and a plant resembling hemp. With these I succeeded in catching some birds: one, resembling our thrush, was very fat, and of delicious flavour. I had the greatest difficulty in overcoming my repugnance to taking away their life; nothing but the obligation of preserving our own could have reconciled me to it. My children plucked them; I ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... that is the immediate effect of contraction caused by the absence of the expanding action of the frog and the consequent dead condition of the hoof from want of circulation and proper secretions. The horse would be equally free from "drop" and "pumiced" sole, seedy toe, thrush, and ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... kaleidoscopic with scenes from the daily round of human life. We are given fleeting but vivid glimpses into the career of merchant and sailor. We see the sportsman in chase of the boar, the rustic setting snares for the greedy thrush, the serenader under the casement, the plowman at his ingleside, the anxious mother at the window on the cliff, never taking her eyes from the curved shore, the husbandman passing industrious days on his own hillside, tilling his own acres with his own oxen, and training the vine to the unwedded ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... puddings compressed within the compass of a thimble, exclusive of the sauce; chocolates, oceans of which lay in mimic lakes, each of which the bill of a humming-bird might expand; tongues of most melodious singing birds—the nightingale, the thrush, and the goldfinch; lambs en supreme, each eliminated of earthly particles, and spiritualized in scarcely tangible results. Over all hovered the memories of exquisite beverages, which became realities when you ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... may consist of a single word or word-group, able in itself to complete a sentence: [The thrush sings. The thrush has been singing]. Some require a following word or words: [William struck John (object complement, or object). Edward became king (attribute complement). The people ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... darkness as—Shall I tell you the truth? You think you sing for the Dawn, but you sing in reality to be admired, you—songster, you! [With contemptuous pity.] Is it possible you are not aware that your poor notes raise a smile right through the forest, accustomed to the fluting of the thrush? ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... not address you; I am scolding my slave. Shall we wager and submit the matter to Lamachus, which of the two is the best to eat, a locust or a thrush? ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... the thrush sings. One of the worst weaknesses of many people is that they do not have the perseverance to stick to what they have to do. They are always wanting to change. Whatever you take up, do it with all your might, and stick ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... oh! so early, my beloved, my beloved, All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease; 'Twas a thrush sang in my garden, "Hear the story, hear the story!" And the lark sang, "Give us glory!" And the dove said, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... say that she loved birds dearly. Not wild songsters, however, who sing best in their native freedom of the skies, like the spotted-breasted, circle-carolling lark, the thicket-haunting blackbird, and the sweet-throated thrush.—It would have afforded her no pleasure to prison up one of these in a cage. But, a little fledgling that had never known what it was to roam at its own sweet will, and who, when offered the liberty of the air, would hardly care to "take advantage of the situation;" that would be the bird which ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I,—to touch that heart? Only a poet, made to pour Love's silver phrase with subtle art In tides of music at her door. What though she bore a brightened blush, As if the echo linger'd long? Even so she listens to the thrush That thrills the air with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... plant we in this apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various |
