XIV 



THRUSH AND MISSEL-THRUSH 



AT length in March the thrush is getting some real 

 sweetness into its song. Now we are enjoying once 

 again what Mrs. Browning had in thought when she 

 made Aurora Leigh say, " And then the thrushes 

 sang/' It may partly be fancy, but I find that 

 through the late autumn and the winter the song- 

 thrush's notes are always rather hard metallic 

 notes. They want, to my ear, that pure and liquid 

 quality which is so delicious in the thrush's song on a 

 spring day or deep in the wondrous dusk of June. 

 Certainly when the earliest song-thrush strikes up in 

 September, or at the beginning of October, one is 

 conscious of a most appealing note ; but there the 

 charm is, I think, not so much in the timbre, in the 

 beauty of the note, it is because the bird has begun 

 afresh after perhaps three months of complete 

 silence : the source of our pleasure is subjective 

 largely. These first irregular, casual bars cannot 

 be so pure and melodious as those of full spring, 

 for the performer is as yet untutored and 

 unpractised. 



So the charm soon lessens, and one hears winter 

 lays of the song-thrush without being much moved ; 

 the quality of the piping notes seems hard ; and I 



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