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This manner of singing is irritating, like the staccato song of our throstle, to a listener who wants a continuous stream of song; but it becomes exceedingly interesting when one discovers that the bird is thinking very much about his own music, if one can use such an expression about a bird; that he is all the time experimenting, trying to get a new phrase, a new combination of the notes he knows and new notes.
For there was no smell in all the town like the clean, sweet smell of the open fields just after a summer rain, no colors like the bright heart's-ease and none-so-pretty, or the honeysuckle over the cottage door, and no song ever to be heard among the sooty chimney-pots like the song of the throstle piping to the daisies on the hill.
And what the cow-bird is, so is the Continental "cuckoo." Shall we not discriminate in our employment of the superlative? What of the throstle and the lark? Shall we still sing all together: "O cuckoo! I hear thee and rejoice! Thrice welcome darling of the spring." How little do we appreciate our opportunities for natural observation!
The priest was at his morning mass; and so soon as Berenger had given his note to Smithers, and sent him off with a fisherman to the THROSTLE, he took up his hat, and went out upon the beach, that lay glistening in the morning sun, then turned straight towards the tall spire of the church, with had been their last night's guide. Philip caught his cloak. 'You are never going there, Berenger?
Even on a summer's afternoon Oakshott's Barn is a desolate place, a place of shadows and solitude, whose slumberous silence is broken only by the rustle of leaves, the trill of a skylark high overhead, or the pipe of throstle and blackbird. It is a place apart, shut out from the world of life and motion, a place suggestive of decay and degeneration, and therefore a depressing place at all times.
Indeed, Shakespeare shows his familiarity with nearly all the British birds. "The ousel-cock, so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill, The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill. "The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark. And dares not answer nay." In "Much Ado about Nothing" we get a glimpse of the lapwing:
And, on the principle that a good thing cannot be said too often, it went on with this all through the summer, till the next winter came and stopped its mouth with icicles. As the stream chattered, so the birds in the wood sang Tweet! tweet! chirrup! throstle! Spring! Spring!
But still he sang best his own unpointed songs, the call and challenge of the throstle and the merle, the morning glory of the lark, songs that were impossible to write. And those were the songs that the precentor was at the greatest pains to have him sing in perfect tones, making him open his mouth like a little round and let the music float out of itself.
Singing, as she wove, a simple song, that, not more by the dialect than the sentiment, betrayed its origin in the ballad of the Norse , which had, in its more careless composition, a character quite distinct from the artificial poetry of the Saxons. The song may be thus imperfectly rendered: "Merrily the throstle sings Amid the merry May; The throstle signs but to my ear; My heart is far away!
The voices and faces of fair women make music and beauty for our ears and our eyes; we love the harp and the lute as well as the mavis and throstle in the hedgerow, and we pore as diligently over a sonnet as thou dost over a sea chart." "And that to me is a strange thing," replied Drake musingly.
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