"Thrush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advance-guard, Saint Simon, similarly prepared, forming the rear; and then on and on they went downward through the bushes, which ever and again brushed against their sleeves, and twice over startled and arrested by a sudden dash as of an enemy; but it was nothing worse than a startled bird, blackbird or thrush, roused from its roosting sleep by ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... friends. Some of these friends went with her to the King's palace, and she now had no difficulty. She knew the language of those who lived in the forest, and she was no longer poor and lonely. So in the pages of this book you will learn of the lives of faithful dogs and huge buffaloes, and the brown thrush will sing for you a song full of meaning. The modest violet, the jack-in-the-pulpit, even the four-leaf clovers will tell you stories about the forest and the field, so that wherever you walk you will be surrounded by your friends. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... began, haltingly, and could not collect my thoughts. Then we were in the cool woods. It was very still, there being only a faint rustling of leaves and the mellow note of a hermit-thrush. The deep shadows were lightened by shafts of sunshine which, here and there, managed to pierce the canopy of foliage. Somehow, the feeling roused by these things ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... pursuing tiger: he pauses not for the daisies in his 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 ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... goin' home," said Hennessey, "for I've been East too long; I want the English hedges an' fields an' the English thrush's song, An' the honest English faces an' never nobody black; It's home for mine," said Hennessey, "so it's down your tents and pack. It'll pass out here For a month or a year, But not for a lifetime—no dam fear. I want my folks," said Hennessey, "an' I'm jolly well goin' back." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... often heard her 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 ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... laverock, 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 ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... did not count them. I made a rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground, the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The wind blew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in the woods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to give me back my peas? The fowls of the air have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... come into competition with each other than between the species of distinct genera. We see this in the recent extension over parts of the United States of one species of swallow having caused the decrease of another species. The recent increase of the missel-thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush. How frequently we hear of one species of rat taking the place of another species under the most different climates! In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... our 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... The male and female seemed to have very different plumage, especially about the head; that on the one having the varying tint of the Rifle bird, the head of the other more resembling in colour, that of the DACELO GIGANTEUS. They were about the size of a thrush, and seemed the sole residents of that particular spot, and I had not seen them elsewhere. The carts came slowly forward, the horses being much distressed. I continued to ride some miles ahead, and passed through a scrub in a clay hollow, to which succeeded ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... all! And this is the girl I recollect, two years ago, singing there in Cavendish Square, as innocent as a nestling thrush!" ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... weasel; I watched the butcher crow working steadily down the hedge. If I turned seaward I looked beneath the blue and saw the dog-fish gnawing on the whiting. If I walked in the garden I surprised the thrush dragging worms from the turf, the cat slinking on the nest, the spider squatting in ambush. Behind the rosy face of every well-nourished child I saw a lamb gazing up at the butcher's knife. My dear Violet, that ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the quiet pools, ready to drop at the faintest movement on the opaque water; the road-runner chased the festive lizard on the desert land back of the willows. Here also in the mesquite and giant cactus were thrush and Western meadow-larks and mocking-birds mimicking the call of the cat-bird. Down in the brush by the river was the happy little water-ousel, as cheerful in his way as the dumpy-built musical canyon wren. The Mexican crossbill appeared to have little fear of the migrating Northern shrike. ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... quetoes extreemly troublesome. I think the river is somewhat higher than when we were here last summer. the present season has been much more moist than the preceeding one. the grass and weeds are much more luxouriant than they were when I left this place on the 13th of July 1805 saw the brown thrush, pigeons, doves &c. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... had opened the windows, and there came in a spicy breath from the woods, together with the wild warble of a wood-thrush. It was so wild and sweet, they both were still to listen. The notes almost broke Diana's heart, but ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... little boy hither and thither in his quest for trout and dace, while to the gentler-minded the modest flowers of the wild-wood appealed with singular directness. A partridge rose now and then from the thicket and whirred away, and with startled eyes the brown thrush peered out from the bushes. I see these pleasant scenes again, and I hear again the beloved sounds of old; and so with reverence and with welcoming I take up my task, for it was among these same Pelham hills that the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... 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 ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... English spring, 'the wee modest crimson-tipped' daisy, or for the meek nestling primrose among the moss. And from the heaven's blue lift no music of larks poured down; no twitter of the chaffinch or whistle of the thrush echoed from the greening woods. Robert thought the blue-bird's voice a poor apology for his ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... monuments of his unfinished task. The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, Was once selected as the corner-stone 15 Of that [5] intended Pile, which would have been Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill, So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, And other little builders who dwell here, Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, 20 For old Sir William was a gentle Knight, Bred in this vale, to which he appertained [6] With all his ancestry. Then peace to him, And for the outrage which he had ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... and out among the 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 travellers ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... blind that does 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 finches ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... approach of the sweet spring Returning here once more,— The memory of the love that holds In my fond heart such power,— The thrush again his song assaying,— The little rills o'er pebbles playing, And sparkling as they fall,— The memory recall Of her on whom my heart's desire Is, shall be, ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... cookery would not discredit the Hotel de Bristol itself, everything being of the best. I was served with a little bird which I ate with great innocence, and no little relish, supposing it to be a snipe, but, on asking what it was, I found, to my horror, the wretches had served up a thrush! I am sorry to say a tremendous slaughter of migratory birds goes on at this time of the year; not only thrushes, but larks, linnets, and other sweet little songsters supplying the general dinner table. The thrushes feed largely on grapes, which lend them a delicious flavour when ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... trees as visitors, or else stay with us and nest in secluded places, how comparatively few do we really depend upon for the aerial colour and the song that opens a glimpse of Eden to our eager eyes and ears each year, for our eternal solace and encouragement? There are some, like the wood thrush, song-sparrow, oriole, robin, barn-swallow, catbird, and wren, without which June would not be June, but an imperfect harmony lacking ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... restrained 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
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... track in the 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 among ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Our pet thrush 'Jack' also liked her better than any of us, though he was tame enough to eat out of my hand, giving me a friendly nip with his sharp beak occasionally, just to show what he could do if he had a mind to and was not ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... recalling its peculiar fragrance; of the misty cobwebs 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 often known to ladies idling ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... as impossible for the first child endowed with this faculty not to speak in the presence of a companion similarly endowed, as it would be for a nightingale or a thrush not to carol to its mate. The same faculty creates the same necessity in our days, and its exercise by young children, when accidentally isolated from the teachings and influence of grown companions, will readily account for the existence of all ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... is spring in the air and everywhere The throb of a life new-born, In mating thrush and blossoming brush, In the hush o' ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush, Or any bird in song; And common leaves that hum all day, Without a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... intellect in birds than people suppose. An instance of that occurred the other day, at a slate quarry belonging to a friend, from whom I have the narrative. A thrush, not aware of the expansive properties of gunpowder, thought proper to build her nest on a ridge of the quarry, in the very centre of which they were constantly blasting the rock. At first she was very much discomposed ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Grimalkin spied the pet, Resolved that he should suffer yet, And laid his plan of devastation So as to save his reputation; For, in the house, from looks demure, He pass'd for honest, kind, and pure. Professing search of mice and moles, He through the garden daily strolls, And never seeks our thrush to catch; But when his consort comes to hatch, Just eats the young ones in a batch. The sadness of the pair bereaved Their generous guardian sorely grieved. But yet it could not be believed His faithful cat was in the wrong, Though so the thrush said in ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... shone yester-morn; I felt the glow down every fibre float, And thought I heard a thrush's piping note Of ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... and smiled pensively. And as again the memory of her yesternight's kindness rose before him, his smile broadened; it became a laugh that went ringing down the glade, scaring a noisy thrush into silence and sending it flying in affright across the scintillant waters of the brook. Then that hearty laugh broke sharply off, as, behind him, the sweetest voice in all the world demanded the reason of this ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... with the springtime, they built a hut of green branches under the great trees. Tristan had known, ever since his childhood, that art by which a man may sing the song of birds in the woods, and at his fancy, he would call as call the thrush, the blackbird and the nightingale, and all winged things; and sometimes in reply very many birds would come on to the branches of his hut and sing their song full-throated in ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... was just climbing above the treetops when the radio boys and Frank Brandon set out over the forest road, to the accompaniment of a full chorus of lusty feathered singers. Robin and starling and thrush combined to make the dewy morning gladsome, and the boys whistled back at them and wished Larry Bartlett were there ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... if I were a bird When winter comes I'd trust you, mother dear, For a few crumbs, Whether I sang or not, Were lark, thrush, or starling.— ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... understand what 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 a basket of dirty clothes. I must confess that I was a great deal mortified at seeing my command ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the Parsonage. A heavy 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 ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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 ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... they do scorn, They rise very early i' th' morn, And walk into the field, where pretty birds do yield Brave music on every thorn. The linnet and thrush do sing on each bush, And the dulcet nightingale Her note doth strain, by jocund vein, To entertain that worthy train, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... fairy finger All things near, Left a dewdrop on each blossom Like a tear Sing! merry thrush, on high To ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... brook with 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 ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... she had ever heard, "except whistlin'," but there had been a great deal of "whistlin'" about the cabin up Lone River; whistling of robins in spring—nothing sweeter—the chordlike whistlings of thrush and vireo after sunset, that bubbling "mar-guer-ite" with which the blackbirds woo, and the light diminuendo with which the bluebird caressed the air after an April flight. Perhaps Joan's musical faculty was less untrained than any other. After all, that ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... 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 ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the 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 have brought her no tidings; On the meadow ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... destitute of game; they came in sight of two grizzly bears, but could not get near enough for a shot; provisions, therefore, began to be scanty. They saw large flights of the kind of thrush commonly called the robin, and many smaller birds of migratory species; but the hills in general appeared lonely and with few signs of animal life. On the evening of the 14th September, they encamped on the forks of the Wind or Bighorn River. The largest of these ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the skin and bones all wadded together in a tidy pellet. An owl is not the only kind of bird, by any means, that has a habit of spitting out hard stuff that is swallowed with the food. A crow tucks away many a discarded cud of that sort; and even the thrush, half an hour or so after a dainty fare of wild cherries, taken whole, drops from his bill to the ground the pits that have been squeezed out of the fruit by the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... flame of the wild-fire abruptly ceased. The dawn arose red and broad in the east. The piles of dead beasts shone out black on the grey plain of the forest glade, and on the topmost bough of a pine tree a thrush began to sing. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... for the leader to raise her finger suddenly, saying, "Fly away [something]." If that something is not capable of flight the other fingers must not move, but if it can fly they must rise also. Thus, "Fly away, thrush!" "Fly away, pigeon!" "Fly away, butterfly!" should cause all the fingers to spring up. But of "Fly away, omnibus!" "Fly away, cat!" "Fly away, pig!" no notice should be taken. The game is, of ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... what was 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
... out and there fell the deep shining peace of a spring afternoon. Somewhere in the distance a cuckoo was calling softly, monotonously, seductively. A thrush was warbling in the terraced garden, and from her window Maud could see old Chops the setter curled up in a warm corner asleep. The children were all out on the downs, and the house ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... 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 of ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... sweetest and brightest of living things. After this, I am rather glad to report that the esteemed table-delicacies, pheasants and partridges, don't get on well in New Zealand; nor do turtle-doves. The thrush is spreading and meets with the approval of the hypercritical New Zealander. The hedge-sparrow, the chaffinch and the goldfinch have flourished abundantly, but the linnet has failed. A very interesting and important problem for New Zealand naturalists to solve is that as to why one ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... 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
... sunlight of the white road. Daisies with wide-open eyes looked up into the blue sky overhead. Golden glistened the buttercups among the shamrock. From the ditches peeped forget-me-not. Honeysuckle scented the hedgerows. Around, above, and afar, carolled the linnet, the lark, and the thrush. All was colour and sunshine, scent and song, as the children of Lir drove onward to ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... 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 ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... I Philomela's tongue, The thrush's note, or warbling song Of blackbird, lark, or linnet; I'd then more gratitude display, Striving to raise a sweeter lay, I'd sing the fleeting hours away, Nor silent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... by the number of collateral points which require 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 ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... imperfect English gruntings. And they spoke one to another of the action that should be taken on his message, or commented with pious exclamations on the mercy of the Lord in thus raising up for them protectors even in the wilderness. Meanwhile a chipmunk flitted along the bole of a fallen tree, a thrush chirped in the brake, a deer, passing airy-footed across an opening in the forest, looked an instant and then turned and plunged fleetly away amid the boughs, and a lean-bellied wolf, prospecting for himself and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... window of the cottage. The sweet wild note of the mocking-bird was awakened in its turn; and from the depths of the tangled woods, where it might defy the human eye and hand, it sent forth its strain, shrill as the thrush, more various than the nightingale, and sweeter than the canary. But for the bird, the Spanish painter, Azua, would have supposed that all this music was the method of reception of the family by the peasantry; but, on expressing his ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... pledging him at table, an amphora of wine at a draught [343]. He presented Asellius Sabinus with two hundred thousand sesterces, for writing a dialogue, in the way of dispute, betwixt the truffle and the fig-pecker, the oyster and the thrush. He likewise instituted a new office to administer to his voluptuousness, to which he appointed Titus ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... 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 ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... to find out," said the judge, sipping his already cold tea from the cup, "how they manage to sing so well. I had a splendid thrush two years ago. Well, all of a sudden he was completely done for, and began to sing, God knows what! He got worse and worse and worse and worse as time went on; he began to rattle and get hoarse—just good for nothing! And this is how it happened: ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... There's a merry brown thrush sitting up in the tree. He's singing to me! He's singing to me! And what does he say, little girl, little boy? "Oh, the world's running over with joy! Don't you hear? Don't you see? Hush! Look! In my tree I'm as happy ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... sea, for we never saw so many as at Pesaro, on the Adriatic;—no insect, then, is more volage, or uncertain as to place, than the firefly. The only poisonous reptile of Sicily is the viper, of which there seem to be several varieties. A beautiful blue thrush (Turdus cyaneus), a great talker, much prized, and high-priced too, when he has been taught to speak, is found in the rocky clefts about Syracuse. The heat and brilliancy of the sunshine render ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... in 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 more beautiful ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond-side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland path. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... and kangaroo strung on the branches of trees; idle and uncleanly men, of different civil condition but of one class; tribes of dogs and natives. No green hedges or flowery meadows, or notes of the thrush or nightingale; but yet there was the park-like lands, the brilliant skies, the pure river; and, above all, the untainted breath ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... foreign home; the buck-bean perchance grows in the water, or the Rhodora fixes here one of its shy camping-places, or there are whole skies of lupine on the sloping banks;—the catbird builds its nest beside us, the yellow-bird above, the wood-thrush sings late and the whippoorwill later, and sometimes the scarlet tanager and his golden-haired bride send a gleam of the tropics through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... COMORIN, Each brilliant bird that wings the air is seen;— Gay, sparkling loories such as gleam between The crimson blossoms of the coral-tree[62] In the warm isles of India's sunny sea: Mecca's blue sacred pigeon,[63] and the thrush Of Hindostan[64] whose holy warblings gush At evening from the tall pagoda's top;— Those golden birds that in the spice time drop About the gardens, drunk with that sweet food[65] Whose scent hath lured ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is very easy for it to become excited in these mountain-holes, without taking into account the wearisomeness of hotel-life. From the very day after our arrival you took a dislike to the paper in our little salon, and its squares, I confess, are very ugly. In every square, a thrush stretching out its neck to peck a currant. Two hundred thrushes and two hundred currants—it was enough to weary you to death. Suddenly ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... pipes are long since burned out. Hark, how sweetly the tawny thrush in yonder thicket touches her silver harp for the evening hymn! I will follow the stream downward, but do you tarry here until the friend comes for whom you were waiting. I think we shall all three meet one another, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... parted hair and his too-apparent sock-suspenders can't be mentioned in the same breath as the Britisher; that our daffodils and primroses are sweeter far than the heavy-scented blossoms of the East; that the "brain-fever" bird of India is a wretched substitute for the lark and the thrush and others of "God's jocund little fowls"; that Abana and Pharpar and other rivers of Damascus are better than this Jordan—all this, I say, I know; but to-night I don't ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... child was with us in the thickest part of the wood a long way off. She heard a bird sing, a mavis I believe—was it not a mavis? Very well, then she heard a thrush, and she turned in the direction whence the sound came. She went some distance, but could not come across it. When she turned back, the bear came out of the bushes, it attacked her, pulled her to the ground, and without doing her any ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... were evident traces of a recent shower. I had no notion that the gates of Kensington Gardens were open so early; and the sensation was novel as I threaded the devious paths in morning dawn, and saw the gas still alight along the Bayswater Road. A solitary thrush was whistling his Christmas carol as I struggled over the inundated sward; presently the sun threw a few red streaks along the East, over the Abbey Tower; but, until I had passed the Serpentine Bridge, not a single ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... 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 his people, which he has indeed, but I pass it by as an illegitimate basis ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... the song of the blackbird 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 ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge— That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... 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 hunt 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 ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... need not have worried himself to death by trying to elude the recurrent "de" of "une couronne de fleurs d'oranger." There was also music of another kind coming from a passero solitario (the blue rock thrush) who was hanging in a cage in a doorway. We spoke to him, and he could not have made more fuss about us if we had been the King of Italy and the Pope of Rome paying ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... ones, and night- hawking goat-suckers, few birds are seen. But, unseen, in the depths of every wood, a songster breaks out ever and anon in notes equal for purity and liveliness to those of our English thrush, and belies the vulgar calumny that tropic birds, lest they should grow too proud of their gay feathers, are denied the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Sparrow-hawk. Hobby. Ring-tail. Raven. Crow. Black Birds, two sorts. Buntings two sorts. Pheasant. Woodcock. Snipe. Partridge. Moorhen. Jay. Green Plover. Plover gray or whistling. Pigeon. Turtle Dove. Parrakeeto. Thrush. Wood-Peckers, five sorts. Mocking-birds, two sorts. Cat-Bird. Cuckoo. Blue-Bird. Bulfinch. Nightingale. Hedge-Sparrow. Wren. Sparrows, two sorts. Lark. Red Bird. East-India Bat. Martins, two sorts. Diveling, or Swift. Swallow. Humming Bird. The Tom-Tit, or Ox-Eye. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... the theatre of nature," Arnold replied. "If you close your eyes and listen, you can hear the orchestra. There is a lark singing above my head, and a thrush somewhere back in the ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sky. Turtle-doves and linnets, fly! Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay, Hither, hither, haste away! One and all, come help me quick, Haste ye, ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... water, which could not be called a stream, and they hung like a palpable sort of clouds in the gathering mists. The mists, in fact, seemed of much the same density as the trees, and I should be bolder than I like if I declared which the birds were singing their vespers in. There was one thrush imitating a nightingale, which I think must have been singing in the heart of the mist, and which probably mistook it for a tree of like substance. It was having, apparently, the time of its life; and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... birds with part of their sustenance, and the principal of these are two well known songsters, the blackbird and the thrush. They, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... sufficiently ripe he went one day to the Wood of Conils. A thrush sang in a tree and a little hedgehog crossed the stony path in front of him with awkward steps. Agaric walked with great strides, muttering ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... pheasants, and partridges—it would be impossible to enumerate all the kinds with which Corsica swarms. If you want shooting, colonel, go to Corsica! There, as one of my entertainers said to me, you can get a shot at every imaginable kind of game, from a thrush to a man!" ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... 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 ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... fly From this magic, but 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... violet shadows brood Under cottonwoods and beeches, Through whose leaves the restless reaches Of the river glance, I've stood, While the red-bird and the thrush Set ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... external 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 ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... crown of ruins, 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 most universally recognized, the most difficult to explain. The silent stir ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... summer. The most familiar and best known of all is the common robin, who may be seen every day, hopping about briskly on the meadows and uttering his cheery, enlivening call. The black-headed grosbeak, too, is here, with the Bullock oriole, and western tanager, brown song-sparrow, hermit thrush, the purple finch,—a fine singer, with head and throat of a rosy-red hue,—several species of warblers and vireos, kinglets, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... for the feet of 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 than ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... of earth where the springs rise, Down with the sweet linnaea and the moss, In the brown thrush's throat, where the pines toss In Winter's harrying storms her secret lies. Ours the chill night-dews and the waiting pain Ere we her fairy wealth may hope ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... 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 a year, a month, a day, No thirst but mine could your thirst allay; ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the dawn while men-folk sleep, Unseen spreads on the light, Till the thrush sings to the coloured things, And earth forgets ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... infinite grace, Wav'd high his blue neck, and his train he display'd, Embroider'd with gold, and with em'ralds inlaid. Then with all the gay troop to the shrubb'ry repair'd, Where the musical Birds had a concert prepar'd; A holly bush form'd the Orchestra, and in it Sat the Black-bird, the Thrush, the Lark, and the Linnet; A BULL-FINCH, a captive! almost from the nest, Now escap'd from his cage, and, with liberty blest, In a sweet mellow tone, join'd the lessons of art With the accents of nature, which flow'd from his heart. The CANARY, a much admir'd ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... students round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like; but the child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards.—C'est tout comme un serin, said the French student ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... eggs, fond thrush, By many a leaf concealed; You starlings, wrens, and blackbirds, sing In every wood and field: While I, who fail to give my love Long raptures twice as fine, Will for her beauty breathe this one— ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... motionless, listening; but no sound broke the morning slumbrousness, except the faraway warbling of a thrush in the first light. So sudden and transitory had been the experience that it seemed now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up, it had with so furtive and sinister a quietness broken in on his solitude, that for ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... brown hares, seeming much at home. The old man's head nodded forward on his book. He could sleep soundly, it seemed, with all these little live things swarming about him. Even as his gray locks swept the page, a thrush fluttered down and lighted gently on the bald crown, beginning to sing so sweetly ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... in the heart of the woods, mounted by a dizzy spiral staircase, at the summit of which you enter Nirvana by means of the "House on the Garden," a glass-house floored with boards and furnished with rustic chairs, a lounge and a writing-table; and here, amid the tree-tops, I write to the music of thrush and blackbird, with restful glances at the sailing clouds or at the sunny weald, that circles for miles around and ends to the south in the "downs" that hide the English Channel. Perhaps it is because my landscape takes in Tennyson's happy Haslemere home that my thought runs so much on him ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... volley of nods, winks and exclamations behind him. The windows stood open, the hour, the season invited. I saw the long, velvety vista of the cypress avenue, the slender feathers of trees in young leaf, the pleasantness of the grass, heard the invitation of a calling thrush, thought poignantly of Virginia, and went out, hoping to ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... To-day it was a flood. "I must keep my feet," she thought; "I must not be swept away!" The thought of him was sometimes overwhelming, like the fire of a summer noon; sometimes meditative, and wound about with memories, like twilight, and the song of the thrush; even at its least, it had been the glow that lives behind the northern horizon in midsummer, witnessing to the hidden glory, during darkness, or the wistful glimmer of stars. Now, while the sun went higher, and all the hum of life rose, and the cries of the water-birds, the buzz of insects ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... hark! how it blooms in the falling dark, That flower of mystical yearning song: Sad as a hermit thrush, as a lark Uplifted, glad, and strong. Heart, we have chosen the better part! Save sacred love and sacred art Nothing is good ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... they eat?—To determine whether seeds would lose their vitality in passing through the digestive organs of birds, Kerner von Marilaun fed seeds of two hundred and fifty different species of plants to each of the following: blackbird, song thrush, robin, jackdaw, raven, nutcracker, goldfinch, titmouse, bullfinch, crossbill, pigeon, fowl, turkey, duck, and a few others; also to marmot, horse, ox, and pig, making five hundred and twenty separate experiments. As to the marmot, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... fence, and every pimple in the measles a stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the hooping-cough, and rolled upon and crushed by a whole field of small diseases, that came trooping on each other's heels to prevent his getting up again. Some bird of prey got into his throat instead of the thrush; and the very chickens turning ferocious—if they have anything to do with that infant malady to which they lend their name—worried ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 'The Lotus-Eaters.' The girls grouped themselves about him, delighted to listen. Many an hour of summer evening had they thus spent, none more peaceful than the present. The reader's cadenced voice blended with the song of a thrush. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... would win any woman,' she said meaningly, 'you must first be a man. You are not a man, Luke. You are a child! You have shut the sunlight from you, and the trill of a thrush pierces you like an arrow. Would you cage your wife in the gloominess of this sepulchre? Would you hush her songs, and tremble beneath her caresses, and die in the delights of her love? Go! Open the window of this vault! Mingle ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... joyous note, The brown thrush whistles bold and free; But my little singing-bird at home Sings a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the gums"—Geranium maculatum—Wild Alum, Cranesbill: Used in decoction with Y[^a]n[^u] Unihye[']st[)i] (Vitis cordifolia) to wash the mouths of children in thrush; also used alone for the same purpose by blowing the chewed fiber into the mouth. Dispensatory: "One of our best indigenous astringents. * * * Diarrhea, chronic dysentery, cholora infantum in the latter stages, and ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... best, some can sing, and some have bright feathers. Those that sing may live near your own homes in the country—the lark, the thrush, the nightingale, and some others. But the birds that have bright feathers live generally in ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... grain: the 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." ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... 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 ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... investigation, and men of learning eager for 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 ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... 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
... "Only one thrush," says Terence, drawing the dilapidated corpse from his pocket, "and a sparrow, and one rabbit I fired at and wounded mortally, I know, but it got away into its hole and I ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... sweet through the moonlit forest rang out the pipes o' Pan, singing of love and joy. Never before had the Piper's flute given forth such music as this. The melody was as instinctive as the mating-call of a thrush, as crystalline as a mountain stream, and as pure as the snow from whence the ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed |
