1 1 2 Up in the Morning Early. 



"the earliest pipe of half-awakened birds." But this 

 early piping does not occupy Mr. Thrush so closely that, 

 if you watch him well, you will fail to see him suddenly 

 bolt from his place on the tree-branch to the green, 

 and run with sharp darty turns and becks and halts, 

 neatly picking up slugs or worms, as it would seem, 

 at each turn or short stoppage : it looks as though, 

 while trilling his first glad welcome to the day (sweet- 

 throated utilitarian that he is !), he had been carefully 

 observing these slugs or worms, and calculated with 

 the nicest precision how many of them he could thus 

 dismember and gobble up in one run ; and having had 

 so good a start for the day's work, he re-perches, and 

 sends forth another stealthy bit of melody more sus- 

 tained and songlike than the last, but not yet of highest 

 and fullest tone. Perhaps this early morning succulent 

 feed may have something to do with his increasing 

 richness of note. I do not know whether it would be 

 either right or proper to quote the concluding fine 

 lines from Mrs. Barrett Browning's well-known sonnet 

 here ; but certainly I must confess they have occurred 

 to me with some quaint questionings, as I have looked 

 on the procedure of Mr. Thrush very early in the 

 summer mornings, whether or not they could in any 

 light be applied to him : — 



" And make the work 

 The better for the sweetness of the song ; '' 



and vice versd. 



In this perhaps the blackbird, most greedy and 

 voracious of birds, would not agree. He does not like 

 Mr. . Thrush, perhaps — as often happens with human 

 beings — because his faults lie so much in the same 

 direction, and he is a distant relative of the family. 



