"Thrush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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. ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... crescendo of the coach-whip bird would scarcely be classed as "sweet." "The tinkle of the bell-bird in the ranges may have gratified his ear; but the likelihood is that the birds which pleased him were the harmonious thrush and the mellow songster so opprobiously named the thickhead, for no better reason than that collectors experience a difficulty in skinning it.* (* Mr. Chas. L. Barrett, a well known Australian ornithologist, and one of the editors of the Emu, knows the Promontory ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... 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 come? Who saw ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... settled at last, and in another week I shall have left Thrush Hill. I am a little bit sorry and a great bit glad. I am going to Montreal to spend the winter ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... be no bird life here, beyond a rare covey of partridges well behind the line, or a solitary lark searching for summer. One misses—oh, so much!—the cheeky chirp of the sparrow or the note of the thrush. We found a stray terrier about yesterday and have adopted it, but I don't think it will go into the front line: there's enough human suffering, without adding innocent canine victims that cannot understand. Here let me say a word for the ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... orthopterous insect? And the birds: he knew them as do few ornithologists, by sight, by sound, by little ways and tricks of their own, known only to themselves and him. The white-throat sparrow with its sweet, far-reaching chant; the hermit-thrush with its chime of bells in the calm summer twilight; the vesper-sparrow that ran before him as he crossed the meadow, or sang for hours, as he fished the stream, its unvarying, but scarcely monotonous little strain; the cedar-bird, with its smooth brown ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... 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 ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... one can claim 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 ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... the widowed thrush flew ceaselessly, uttering sad cries;—who now should wander with him through the sunlight?—who now should rove with him above the blossoming fields?—who now should sit with him beneath the boughs hearing the sweet rain ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... beautiful upland geese, winter visitors from Magellanic lands, and two swans, the lovely black-necked, and the pure white with rosy bill. Of rails, or ralline birds, there are ten or twelve, ranging from a small spotted creature no bigger than a thrush to some large majestic birds. One is the courlan, called "crazy widow" from its mourning plumage and long melancholy screams, which on still evenings may be heard a league away. Another is the graceful variegated ypicaha, fond of social gatherings, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... spotted and puffy, not unlike a toad, moved about under the gorse of the garden hedge one morning, half hidden by the stalks of old grasses. By-and-by it hopped out—the last thrush, so distended with puffed feathers against the frost as to be almost shapeless. He searched about hopelessly round the stones and in the nooks, all hard and frostbound; there was the shell of a snail, dry and whitened and empty, as ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... and the Thrush, and charming Nightingale, Whose sweet jug sweetly echoes through every grove ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... The wood thrush, on the contrary, is patience itself. A youngster of this lovely family sits a half hour at a time motionless and silent on a branch, head drawn down upon his shoulders, apparently in the deepest meditation. When he sees food coming he is gently ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... than I can ever pay. I thought to have dried up my tears for ever, the day I left you; but as I write this, they stream again. If they did not, I think my heart would burst. I walk out here of an afternoon, and hear the notes of the thrush, that come up from a sheltered valley below, welcome in the spring; but they do not melt my heart as they used: it is grown cold and dead. As you say, it will one day be colder.—Forgive what I have written above; I did not intend it: but you were once my little ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... attention, and suddenly a faint whistle came from his lips. Without removing his eyes from Arabian he whistled several times a little tune of five notes, like the song of a thrush. Arabian meanwhile returned his gaze rather doubtfully, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... 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, hiding itself from the heat of the sun, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... He was little and inconspicuous in shades of brown, with tail stuck pertly up, wren fashion, foraging among the dead leaves and on old logs, entirely unconscious that he was one of the three distinguished singers of the wood; none but the hermit thrush and the veery being comparable to him. Whenever, in the serious business of getting his breakfast, he reached a particularly inviting twig, or a more than usually nice rest on a log, he threw up ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... custom and law of Dakotas. The gifts to the teepee were brought—the blankets and beads of the White men, And Winona, the orphaned, was bought by the crafty, relentless Tamdoka. In the Spring-time of life, in the flush of the gladsome mid-May days of Summer, When the bobolink sang and the thrush, and the red robin chirped in the branches, To the tent of the brave must she go; she must kindle the fire in his teepee; She must sit in the lodge of her foe, as a slave at the feet of her master. Alas for her waiting! the wings of the East-wind ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... 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
... the 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 ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... thrush A contagious childhood disease caused by a fungus, Candida albicans. Causes small whitish eruptions on the mouth, throat, and tongue, and usually accompanied by fever, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... 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 ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... in 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 ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... beautiful eyes are as midday to me, When the lily-bell bends with the weight of the bee, And the throat of the thrush is a-pulse in the heat, And the senses are drugged with the subtle and sweet And delirious breaths of the air's lullabies— So I swoon in the noon ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... left their sharp summits distinct against the sky. But the shadows coiled dull and heavy round the evergreens that skirted the churchyard, so that their outline was vague and confused; and there was a depth in that lonely stillness, broken only when the thrush flew out from the lower bushes, and the thick laurel-leaves stirred reluctantly, and again were rigid in repose. There is a certain melancholy in the evenings of early spring which is among those influences of Nature ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... road, on a glorious evening that had succeeded the storm of the previous night; but, fast as the horse went, Brother Solomon did not seem satisfied, for he kept on screwing up his lips and making a noise, like a young thrush just out of the nest, to hurry the horse on, but it had not the slightest effect, for the animal had its own pace—a very quick one, and ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... interlacing branches like stars in a network of closely wrought iron. On their hardy shrubs the pale pink clusters of mountain laurel were beaten into shapeless colour-masses by the wind-blown rains. Sometimes, up above, where the fiery points of redbud trees shot skyward, a thrush sang or a blue jay scolded—and the bird-notes were laden, like the air, with the primal ripeness ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... was blinking in the rays of the morning sun; the house and cow-house doors were closed, and no poultry wandered about the field in search of stray grains of corn, or early worms. It was a strange and unfamiliar silence, and struck solemnly on Sylvia's mind. Only a thrush in the old orchard down in the hollow, out of sight, whistled and gurgled with continual ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... trees. The 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 ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... year. Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a piratical cruise against a whole flotilla of butterflies, which is rising and falling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... time I left my hotel until I was fairly above the dwarf spruces below the summit of Lafayette, I was never for many minutes together out of the hearing of thrush music. Four of our five summer representatives of the genus Turdus took turns, as it were, in the serenade. The veeries—Wilson's thrushes—greeted me before I stepped off the piazza. As I neared the Profile House farm, the hermits were in tune ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... not believe in them. I have seen just round Hatton that the whole bird world is ruled by the signs that the trees hang out.' And she asked me what they were, and I told her to notice next spring that as soon as the birch-leaves opened, the pheasant began to crow and the thrush to sing and the blackbird to whistle; and when the oak-leaves looked their reddest, and not a day before, the whole tribe of ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of beans, adding to them a little wheat, and give us some figs. Syra! call Manes off the fields, 'tis impossible to prune the vine or to align the ridges, for the ground is too wet to-day. Let someone bring me the thrush and those two chaffinches; there were also some curds and four pieces of hare, unless the cat stole them last evening, for I know not what the infernal noise was that I heard in the house. Serve up three of the pieces for me, slave, and give the fourth ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... Give me a kiss, my poet, take thy lyre; The buds are bursting on the wild sweet-briar. To-night the Spring is born—the breeze takes fire. Expectant of the dawn behold the thrush, Perched on the fresh branch of the first green bush; Give me a kiss, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... roar of the forest king once startled the echoes. We have turned the oil and filth of our refineries into the streams that once crept purling and laughing through the wild-flowers and grasses, and the black smoke of our factories has silenced the plaintive note of the thrush and strangled the wondrous song of the nightingale. Our grandeur is ostentation and our dignity a dead-letter. The greatness that once longed for new worlds to conquer has degenerated into yellow-fingered grasping for ginger-bread display. The ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... pursuits, followed the career of a gun-runner, acting as such off and on for two and a half years. The particular revolutionary chief whose fortunes he was following finally came into power, and Cherrie immortalized his name by naming a new species of ant-thrush after him—a delightful touch, in its practical combination of those not normally ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... up the glen, a wood-thrush suddenly began its almost unrivalled song. The familiar melody, heard so often from his cottage-porch in the June twilight, awoke him to the bitter truth. His wife had then sat beside him, while ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... populous woods? Where do they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might hide or avoid. ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... mossy brink Where the cattle came to drink. They trilled and piped and whistled With the thrush and bobolink, Till the kine in listless pause, Switched their tails in mute applause, With lifted heads and dreamy eyes, And ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... and be free of yellow colour! The cows whose divinity is Rohini, they who, moreover, are themselves red (rohinih)—in their every form and every strength we do envelop thee. Into the parrots, into the thrush, do we put thy jaundice, and, furthermore, into the yellow wagtail do we put thy jaundice." While he uttered these words, the priest, in order to infuse the rosy hue of health into the sallow patient, gave him water to sip which was mixed with the hair of a red bull; he poured water over ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... heath-clad braes and grassy knowes. Its mountain peaks rise bare and rugged to the skies, where lordly eagles soar. Its brawling burns in their infancy dash down these rugged steeps, but as they grow older flow on through many a hazel dell, where thrush and blackbird fill the woods with melody—through many flowering pastures, where cattle browse and lambkins skip on the sunny braes. Wild-fowl breed on its reedy lochs, and moor-fowl dwell on its heather hills. ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... care. She also had learnt to ride, and ride hard—to go to the stable and see that her own horse was made up—and to rate her groom in no gentle terms, if things in that department were not as they should be. She also could be eloquent on thrush, sand-cracks, and overreaches—could detect a splint or a spavin at a glance—knew all the parts and portions and joints of a horse much more accurately than she did of a sheep, and was a thorough judge of condition. Rumour also not unfrequently hinted, among the tabbies of Carrick-on-Shannon, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... light. With the hush of night the breeze died into stillness until scarce a leaf of the weather-beaten poplars stirred. From the tangle of roses, sweet fern and bayberry that overgrew the fields the note of a thrush rose clear on the quiet air. A whirling bevy of gulls circled the bar, left naked and opalescent by the receding tide. Peace was everywhere, divine peace, save in the breasts of those who gazed only to find a mockery in ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Valleys! O, joys that they bring Where the breeze whispers love in the love-days of spring, And the songs of the thrush from the love gardens float With the music that spills from the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... 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, destruction then Would follow with a mighty crash. 'Twas then I broke that awful ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... 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 known ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... 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, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... Spring will no more linger, but come with joyous shout, With music in the city squares and laughter down the lane; The thrush will pipe at twilight to draw the blossoms out, And the vanguard of the summer host will camp ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... 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
... British birds, the sole speaker occasionally drops into English, or I should never have understood what was going on. He may be a blackbird or thrush, but I doubt it, because I know all their remarks, while his are new to me. If A.A.M. heard them he would probably tell me they were those of a "Blackman's Warbler," and I should have believed him—once. Hardly now, after he has so airily exposed his title as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... himself upon 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 Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... (for I take it the thrush sings not, but deuoures) sing loudly in a May morning, delights the eare much (and you neede not want their company, if you haue ripe cherries or berries, and would as gladly as the rest do you pleasure:) But I had rather want their company ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... breath. You have put so many questions, and I myself are charged with so many commissions, that they are crowding together like old women at the door of the mosque, who have lost their shoes. First, at your desire, I have been to Khounzakh. I crept along so softly, that I did not scare a single thrush by the road. Sultan Akhmet Khan is well, and at home. He asked about you with great anxiety, shook his head, and enquired if you did not want a spindle to dry the silk of Derbend. The khansha sends you tchokh selammoum, (many compliments,) and as many sweet cakes. I threw them away, the confounded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... sxpareco. Thrifty sxparema. Thrill vibri, eksciti. Thrive prosperi. 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] Thus tiel, tiamaniere. Thwart malhelpi. Thy cia, via. Thyme timiano. Tibia ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Mr. Reed] which rises behind the town is a charming scene, which I will attempt to describe. You have seen a rural hamlet, where each cottage is half concealed by its own garden. Now convert your linden into graceful palm, your apples into oranges, your gooseberry-bushes into bananas, your thrush which sings in its wicker cage into a gray parrot whistling on a rail; ... sprinkle this with strange and powerful perfumes; place in the west a sun flaming among golden clouds in a prussian-blue sea, dotted with white sails; imagine those mysterious and unknown sounds, those breathings of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... day declined the breeze of evening awoke, rattling the blind. By now the sun had swung farther west, and the nurse pulled the blind up. Outside in the bushes in the garden the call of birds to each other had begun, and a thrush came close to the window and sang a liquid phrase, and then repeated it. Michael glanced there and saw the bird, speckle-breasted, with throat that throbbed with the notes; and then, looking back to the bed, he saw that his mother's ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... little roughness of a thrush's, which sings through a throat that is loosely strung with wires of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... such events to occur, the 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 sang a ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... stones into the lake, a pastime of which he was getting a little tired. A huge thrush was thinking about commencing to build his nest, and in the meantime sat upon a fallen log across the way and sang about it. A little tree-climbing bird ran round and round the trunk of the nearest elm, staring at them, every time he appeared, with his ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 that the dear lady of whom I am to speak ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... mine who lived in the country tried to describe to me a bird that built a nest in a tree within a few feet of the house. As it was a brown bird, I should have taken it for a wood thrush, had not the nest been described as so thin and loose that from beneath the eggs could be distinctly seen. The most pronounced feature in the description was the barred appearance of the under side of the bird's tail. I was quite at sea, until one day, when we were driving out, a cuckoo ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... one to feed them, the other to prevent their tender feet from freezing fast to the earth as I have frequently observed them to do." His love of birds is marked: this in those provinces of which a German traveller wrote: "In the thrush kind America is poor; there is only the red-breasted robin. ... There are no sparrows. Very few birds nest in the woods; a solemn stillness prevails through them, interrupted only by the screaming of the crows." It is good, after such a passage as this has been ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... many years' imprisonment, and being let loose to live as best she could, the girl became a servant, passed from hand to hand, inherited some property from an old farmer, whom she had caught, as if she had been a thrush on a twig covered with bird-lime, and with the money she had built this public-house on the new road which was being built ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... primrose, and the violet, are its many-coloured floor of green, white, yellow, and blue; the may-flower, and the woodbine, and the eglantine, and the ivy, are its decorations, its curtains, and its tapestry: the lark, and the thrush, and the linnet, and the nightingale, are its unhired minstrels and musicians. Robin Hood is king of the forest both by dignity of birth and by virtue of his standing army: to say nothing of the free choice of ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... birds in everie bush, The blackbird and the Thrush, The chirping Nightingale, The Mavis and Wagtaile, The Linnet and the Larke, Oh ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... let himself out, and was gone some time. When he reappeared, he produced, not a rabbit, but four sparrows and a thrush. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... bird; spread wide when it is flying, and folded up like a fan when it is resting, perched upon the branch of a tree, swaying to and fro in the sunshine. But how sad it is to see such a wild, free creature as a lark, or even a thrush or a linnet, pent up in a narrow cage, where there is no room to stretch those wings so strong and light, no swinging branch to rest upon; but all the little prisoner can do is to hop from one perch to another, and beat its wings against the "wiry grate" which ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... 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
... day I was made glad by finding that John Burroughs, Poet and Prophet, says that the male thrush sings to please himself, out of pure delight; and pleasing himself, he pleases his mate. "The female," says Burroughs, "is always pleased with a male that is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... gush, And the singing of the thrush; And we saw the squirrel's brush In the hedges, As along his back 't was thrown, Like a glory of his own. While the sun behind it, shone ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... 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 of sweet ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... supply the Place of the Sun, obliging me with as much Light as was necessary to discover a thousand pleasing Objects, and at the same time divested of all Power of Heat. The Reflection of it in the Water, the Fanning of the Wind rustling on the Leaves, the Singing of the Thrush and Nightingale, and the Coolness of the Walks, all conspired to make me lay aside all displeasing Thoughts, and brought me into such a Tranquility of Mind, as is I believe the next Happiness to that of hereafter. In this sweet Retirement ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... housetops. These, like the crows, magpies, and swallows, prove valuable allies to the husbandmen in their war against the locust. A still more serviceable friend in this direction is the smarmar, a pink thrush with black wings. Besides the various caravan trains of camels, donkeys, horses, and mules, the road is frequently dotted with ox-carts, run on solid wooden wheels without tires, and drawn by that peculiar bovine species, the buffalo. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... moved, hearing 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 ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Laval changed her travelling dress, and Mrs. Bartholomew alternately assisted and talked to her. That elegant crimson satin robe swept round the room in a way that was very imposing to Matilda. She could not help feeling like a little brown thrush in the midst of a company of resplendent parrots and birds of paradise. But she did not much care. Only she thought it would be very pleasant to have the wardrobe upstairs furnished with a set of dresses to correspond somewhat with her new splendid surroundings. Mrs. Bartholomew had ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... exceptionally gay. I got some very nice insects here, though, owing to illness most of the time, my collection was a small one, and my boy Ali shot me a pair of one of the most beautiful birds of the East, Pitta gigas, a lame ground-thrush, whose plumage of velvety black above is relieved by a breast of pure white, shoulders of azure blue, and belly of vivid crimson. It has very long and strong legs, and hops about with such activity in the dense tangled forest, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... is the time when careful spying Discovers the secrets Nature knows. You find when the butterflies plan for flying (Before the thrush or the blackbird goes), You see some day by the water's edges A brilliant border of red and black; And then off over the hills and hedges It flutters away on the ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from eagles, hawks, and other birds ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... dancings, and interludes, but with the greatest diversity of dishes and the most elaborate cookery, for the vulgar to admire and envy. It was a happy thought of Pompey in his sickness, when his physician prescribed a thrush for his dinner, and his servants told him that in summer time thrushes were not to be found anywhere but in Lucullus's fattening coops, that he would not suffer them to fetch one thence, but observing to his physician, "So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the following: the bustard (which is of two kinds—the great and the middle-sized), the egret, the crane, the stork, the pelican, the flamingo, the red partridge, the black partridge or francolin, the parrot, the Seleucian thrush (Turdus Seleucus), the vulture, the falcon or hunting hawk, the owl, the wild swan, the bramin goose, the ordinary wild goose, the wild duck, the teal, the tern, the sand-grouse, the turtle dove, the nightingale, the jay, the plover, and the snipe. There is also a large ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... content in every thing—in the ripple of the river at her feet, the flutter of the leaves over her head, the soft blue sky above the colleges, and the green grass gemmed with daisies, where an old man was mowing on the one side, and a large thrush, grown silent with summer, was hopping about on the other. Every thing seemed beautiful, for the beauty began ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... but in her own fashion. She would spend the day prowling round the garden, eating, watching, laughing, picking at the grapes on the vines like a thrush, secretly plucking a peach from the trellis, climbing a plum-tree, or giving it a little surreptitious shake as she passed to bring down a rain of the golden mirabelles which melt in the mouth like scented honey. Or she would pick the flowers, although that was forbidden: quickly she would ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... like the Egyptians, animals and birds; and, like the Assyrians, the sun and moon; they attributed moreover, a sort of divinity to the rainbow. The Tagalos adored a blue bird, as large as a thrush, and called it Bathala, which was among them a term of divinity. [79] They also worshiped the crow (as the ancients worshiped the god Pan and the goddess Ceres). It bore the name Mei lupa, which signifies ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... now came Paris from the house Into the sun, rosy and amorous, As when the sun himself from the sea-rim Lifteth, and gloweth on the earth grown dim With waiting; and he piped a low clear call As mellow as the thrush's at the fall Of day from some near thicket. At whose sound Rose up caught Helen and blushing turned her round To face him; but in going, ere she met The prince, her hand along the parapet She trailed, palm out, for sign to who below Rent at himself, nor had ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... the horrid figures, Theo?' Queenie asked, half-sympathetically, half-absently, her attention being attracted by a bold thrush hopping across the graves. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... for excellence because of its "spiritual quality." Colonel Roosevelt liked the song of the blackbird so much that he was almost indignant that he had not heard more of its reputation before. He said everybody talked about the song of the thrush; it had a great reputation, but the song of the blackbird, though less often mentioned, was much better than that of the thrush. He wanted to know the reason of this injustice and kept asking the question of himself and me. At last he suggested that the name ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... of the skin, resulting in trouble, and making sores difficult to heal. So long as the plant continues to grow, the sores, of course, can not be healed, and when the organisms get into the skin under the hair it is frequently difficult to destroy them. Among the diseases thus caused are ringworm, thrush, alopecia, etc. ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... oak intermingling. The track seemed to run through it, by the edge of the Blackburn Lynn. Pressing onward, Mrs. Chesters determined to ensconce herself there behind the rocks, or in the trees, and surprise her husband as he rode through. On he came, gaily whistling, happy as a thrush in spring rejoicing in his mate; on he came, his horse trotting swiftly, scenting a 'feed' at ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the song of the thrush and the pipe of the plover Sweet voices come down through the binding lead; O queens that every age must discover For men, that man's delight may be fed; Oh, sister queens to the queens I wed. For the space of ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... from going off by himself 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
... see me as often as you do the Blue-bird, Robin, Thrush and most other birds, but it is because you don't look for me. Like all other owls I keep quiet during the day, but when night comes on, then my day begins. I would just as soon do as the other birds—be busy during the day and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... seeks by blazonry Of color to conceal her swift decrease. Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-agd summer! Vain this show! Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset One meadow with a single violet; And well the singing thrush and lily know, Spite of all artifice which her regret Can deck in splendid guise, ...
— A Calendar of Sonnets • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the quiet valley so happy as the rose-tree,—none other so happy unless perchance it was the thrush who made his home in the linden yonder. The thrush loved the rose-tree's daughter, and he was happy in thinking that some day she would be his bride. Now the rose-tree had many daughters, and each was beautiful; but the rose whom the thrush loved was ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... full song now, and by degrees others joined in—thrush, and lark, and linnet, with the humbler voices of the farmyard—until the sunny air ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... parts, and the passage to the womb (vagina), in these cases, are not only irritable and itching, but are sometimes hot and inflamed, and are covered either with small pimples, or with a whitish exudation of the nature of aphtha (thrush), somewhat similar to the thrush on the mouth of an infant; then, the addition of glycerine to the lotion is a great improvement and usually gives ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... they would 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 ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... she exclaimed triumphantly, "you've no call to mind about that. That's only thrush, that is. Three of ourn had it, and did beautiful. She's bound to be a bit fretful, but she won't come to no harm, so long ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... himself forward to try what he can do to fix the eyes of the universe upon him. Vain the attempt! He reads the clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the seasons, the falling leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of spring, starts with delight at the note of a thrush in a copse near him, sits by the fire, listens to the moaning of the wind, pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing hours away, or melts down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All this while he is taken up with other things, forgetting himself. He relishes an author's ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... an egg, and a nut." Then, its 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 bird's darting flight and pensile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... forgetting all the rudeness of the winter winds, began to 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 ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... song-sparrow has a joyous note, The brown thrush whistles bold and free; But my little singing-bird at home Sings a sweeter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... more and more unhappy, and when the dusk of early evening came creeping through the Green Forest, he sat about and moped instead of running about and playing as he had been in the habit of doing. The beautiful song of Melody the Wood Thrush somehow filled him with sadness instead of with the joy he had always felt before. The very happiness of those about him seemed to make him ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... pursued: I have fled with vigour, I have fled as a frog, I 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
... and song are higher than Man. I carry the news seaward of the first song of the thrush after the furious retreat of winter northward, and the first timid anemone learns from me that she is safe and that spring has truly come. Oh but the song of all the birds in spring is more beautiful than Man, and the first coming of the hyacinth more delectable than his face! When spring ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... that can be imagined: he followed us upwards of a mile, when he left us, joining several companions to the right of us. Emus and kangaroos abound, and there is a great diversity of birds, some of which have the most delightful notes, particularly the thrush. ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... youthful, gay, capricious Spring, Piercing her showery clouds with crystal light, And with their hues reflected streaking bright Her radiant bow, bids all her Warblers sing; The Lark, shrill caroling on soaring wing; The lonely Thrush, in brake, with blossoms white, That tunes his pipe so loud; while, from the sight Coy bending their dropt heads, young Cowslips fling Rich perfume o'er the fields.—It is the prime Of Hours that Beauty robes:—yet ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... as old as the time of the Anglo-Saxons, such as the "Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus."[746] There are found in the English language debates or dialogues between the Owl and Nightingale, thirteenth century; the Thrush and Nightingale; the Fox and Wolf, time of Edward I.; the Carpenter's Tools, and others.[747] Collections of silly answers were also made in England; one of them was composed to the confusion of the inhabitants of Norfolk; ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... dew had fallen 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 of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate,—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... keep ticking? Why does his round white face Stare at me over the books and ink, And mock at my disgrace? Why does that thrush call, 'Dunce, dunce, dunce!'? Why does that bluebottle buzz? Why does the sun so silent shine? — And what do I care ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... different animals. Latterly number of shoes have been invented and patented, all professing to be exactly what is wanted to relieve and cure diseased feet of all kinds. One man has a shoe he calls "concave," and says it will cure contraction, corns, thrush, quarter-crack, toe-crack, &c., &c. But when you come to examine it closely, you will find it nothing more than a nicely dressed piece of iron, made almost in the shape of a half moon. After a fair trial, however, it will be found of no more virtue in curing diseases or relieving the animal ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... The thrush soars up, over green clad hills, (The day is long, so long;) Like liquid silver his music spills, And ever it quivers, and runs, and trills In a glad sweet ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... over the cracked and dried-up plain: though it could not run very fast, it doubled quickly, and the rough cracked ground made odds in its favour; but it was ultimately secured. Pigeons, brown coloured, of various sizes, from that of a thrush to that of a common dove, were numerous and very tame. One of the smallest species alights and seeks about in the streets of small towns for seeds, like a sparrow, and more boldly than that bird, for it is not molested by the children—more ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... as the Brown Thrush has been called, arrives in the Eastern and Middle States about the 10th of May, at which season he may be seen, perched on the highest twig of a hedge, or on the topmost branch of a tree, singing ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... rolling sweep of green slopes; from a high mist of thin verdure to low wind-shaken banners of young leaves; from giant poplar to white ash and sugar-tree; from log-cabin to homesteads of brick and stone; from wood-thrush to meadow-lark; rhododendron to bluegrass; from mountain to lowland, Crittenden was ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... and how green the meadow looked before Simon Copland's farm! The thrush in the great thorn was singing loudly, and the old clock, which stood in its dark oak case in the corner of the kitchen, struck twelve as little Phoebe ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... a young thrush," said Frank gaily, as he drew a small cage from behind his back and held it up to the little girl. "I put him in here because it was the only thing I could find; but I will get you a proper big cage ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... looked grave at this speech, and a little thrush hopped from one branch to another, ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... pries among the thickets, following up the trail of warbler, sparrow, or thrush like a sleuth-hound. Yonder a tiny yellow-bird with a jet-black cheek flits hither with a wisp of dry grass in her beak, and disappears in the branches of a small tree close to my studio door. Like the shadow of fate the cow-bird suddenly ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... quadriales, to be sure, Beranger's songs and odes of the camp; for she knew of no hymn but the "Marseillaise," and her chants were all chants like the "Laus Veneris." But the voice that gave them was pure as the voice of a thrush in the spring, and the cadence of its music was so silvery sweet that it soothed like a spell all the fever-racked brains, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... 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, very pugnacious, continually chasing one another about the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... to periods of delicious calm and content only clouded by a longing to be back with the artist again. He loved her; the voice of his love was the song of the spring weather, and the thrush echoed it and the early flowers wrote it on the hedgerows. God was everywhere to her open eyes. Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, seemed to have been created for her delight during that homeward walk. She was mightily ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... on the lips and inside the cheeks like little white threads or flakes. It is also called thrush. In bad cases it may cover the tongue and the whole of the inside of ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... 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
... and the thrush, That made the woods to ring, With all the rest, are now at hush, And not ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... springtime, and the valley of Wanley is bursting into green and flowery life, peacefully glad as if the foot of Demos had never come that way. Incredible that the fume of furnaces ever desecrated that fleece-sown sky of tenderest blue, that hammers clanged and engines roared where now the thrush utters his song so joyously. Hubert Eldon has been as good as his word. In all the valley no trace is left of what was called New Wanley. Once more we can climb to the top of Stanbury Hill and enjoy the sense of remoteness and security when we see that ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... nearer both to nature and to man. No high-road, not even a lane, conducts to the deeper recesses of the wood, where you hear the wood-thrush. There are a thousand concealed fitnesses in nature, rhymed correspondences of bird and blossom, for which you must seek through hidden paths; as when you come upon some black brook so palisaded with cardinal-flowers as to seem "a stream of sunsets"; ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... body seemed as full of the spirit of the waltz as a thrush's body is of song. Peter Roeder moved along with her in a maze, only half-answering her questions, his ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... was laden with perfume—the wonderful indescribable essences of spring. Away in the distance, faintly heard, arose the bleating of lambs. Near at hand, throned among the purple flowers above their heads, a thrush was pouring out the rapture that thrilled his tiny life. The whole world pulsed to the one great melody—the universal, wordless song. Only the man and the woman were silent as intruders ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Onthophagi, and minute Carabidae, being the most abundant. Now and then the "sagueir" makers brought me a fine rosechafer (Sternoplus schaumii) which they found licking up the sweet sap. Almost the only new birds I met with for some time were a handsome ground thrush (Pitta celebensis), and a beautiful violet-crowned dove (Ptilonopus celebensis), both very similar to birds I had recently obtained at Aru, but ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... itself in its green, gorgeous array; now that King Day shines in all his glory through the mist by day, and the moon and stars appear in their brilliancy in the evenings; now that, as if in harmony with the artistic rendering of Easter anthems by your choirs, the thrush and the blackbird twitter forth the disappearance of the foggy winter with its snow, sleet and wet; now that the flocks of fleecy sheep, which for the past four months have been in hiding and conspicuous by their absence, come forward ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with a plume or a bit of down from his breast. The Robin first, who had shared his peril, brought a feather sadly scorched, but precious; the Lark next, who had helped in the time of need. The Eagle bestowed a kingly feather, the Thrush, the Nightingale,—every bird contributed ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... sang the throstel* cock: *thrush Tubal himself, the first musician, With key of harmony could not unlock So sweet a tune as that the throstel can: "The Lord of Love we praise," quoth he than,* *then And so do all the fowles great and lite;* *little "Honour we May, in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... wheeled his bed to the window, which opened to the ground. A white frost was on the grass, and there was a clear sky through which the sunrise was fast mounting. Along an eastern wood ran a fiery rose of dawn, the fine leaf-work of the beeches showing sharply upon it. There was a thrush singing, and a robin came close to the window, hopped on ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scattered blocks of sun-baked coral, lovely butterflies and other insects flitted amongst low growth, in company with tiny sun-birds which seemed clothed in brilliant burnished mail, and at every few steps larger birds, perfectly new to the visitors, took flight or hurried thrush-like to take refuge beneath ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... silence. And though Carovius used every available opportunity from then on to flatter the young nobleman in his cunning, crafty way, he failed. The most he could do was to inspire Eberhard to lift his thrush-bearded chin in the air and make some sarcastic remark. Fawn as he might, Carovius was ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... meadow caught here and there its scarlet tinge. It was very still, 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 ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, though all had gay and charming bits of news about themselves. And Daisy thought the world got younger ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... stretched from bush to bush, and decked with dazzling drops of dew; of the healthy happy heath creatures peeping out at her shyly, here a rabbit and there a hare; of a lark that sprang up singing and was lost to sight in a moment, of a thrush that paused to reflect as she passed. She thought of the little church on the high cliffs, the bourne of her morning walks, of the long stretch of sand; and of the sea; and she felt the fresh free air of those open spaces rouse her again to a gladness in life not ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... lively 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, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... in the flower appeal to some aesthetic standard in the mind of the insect? What of the tail of the peacock? Its iridescent rings and eyes evidently appeal to something in the mind of the female. Do form and grouping minister to pure sense gratification? What of the song of the thrush? Does not the orderly and harmonious arrangement of notes and cadences appeal to some standard of order of arrangement, and hence idea of harmony, in the mind of ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... 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 ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... me where I can get a catalogue of birds' eggs? I am starting a collection of eggs, and would like to exchange an egg of a brown thrush ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 'The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird, They taught me how to sing: And O that the hawk would lend his eye, And the eagle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... summer-eventide everywhere! The great Sun hangs flaming on the utmost North-West; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will ere long be at their ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on long-shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the Earth. Your dusty Mill of Valmy, as all other mills and drudgeries, may furl ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... far elm-tree shadows flood Dark patches in the burning grass, The cows, each with her peaceful cud, Lie waiting for the heat to pass. From somewhere on the slope near by Into the pale depth of the noon A wandering thrush slides leisurely His thin ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... further 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 gifts, amongst ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... get dark, and I suggested that we had better be going back to the hotel. The talk seemed already to have taken us away from all pleasure in the prospect; I said, as we found our way through the rich, balsam-scented twilight of the woods, where one joy-haunted thrush was still singing: "You know that in America the law is careful not to meddle with a man's private affairs, and we don't attempt ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... that child. No amount of hushing has any effect; you might just as well hush a blackbird or a thrush. Don't look so worried, Jan. Did Mr. Ledgard say anything about Hugo ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... bird he did not know. But he knew a thrush—it was one of the four birds he knew, and he stuck to it that it was a thrush singing. Afterwards he pointed out the squalid-looking cottage he lived in. It was on the estate of a ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... 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. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... ABROAD" is a longing reminiscence of an English April and May, with their young leaves and their blossoms, their sunshine and their dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup—England's gift to her little children—is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... linnet sang, the thrush whistled, but she did not heed them. She blamed herself for having crossed the threshold of the forester's house, and yet she could not turn away her thoughts from it. The stranger made her feel uneasy and insecure. Was he thus daring because nothing ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... tallest trees, from which it perpetually serenades us with some of the sweetest notes, and as clear as those of the nightingale. I have followed it for miles, without ever but once getting a good view of it. It is of the size and make of the mockingbird, lightly thrush-colored on the back, and a grayish-white on the breast and belly. Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law, was in possession of one which had been shot by a neighbor," etc. Randolph pronounced it a flycatcher, which was a good way wide ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... natural state, the plant is believed to be propagated by the missel-thrush, which feeds upon its berries, but under favourable climatic conditions one may raise one's own mistletoe by bruising the berries on the bark of fruit trees, where they take root readily. It must be remembered, however, that the plant is a true parasite and will eventually kill whatever tree ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... the crow foraging for birds' eggs, the woodpecker and chickadees for their food, and the high-hole for ants. The redbird comes, too, if only to see what a friendly covert its branches form; and the wood thrush now and then comes out of the grove near by, and nests alongside of its cousin, the robin. The smaller hawks know that this is a most likely spot for their prey, and in spring the shy northern warblers may be studied ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... apple-bloom behind them, and going down the gravel-path passed the plum trees—the daffodils there were over now—by the strawberry patch which Iden had planted under the parlour window; by the great box-hedge where a thrush sat on her nest undisturbed, though Amaryllis's dress brushed the branches; by the espalier ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies |
