WOOD THRUSH 119 



are said to possess a timbre and tone-quality 

 finer still, but I find it hard to imagine. 



This leaves the Wood Thrush to be safely 

 named as the finest singer of our region. Fortu- 

 nately he is common throughout the wooded por- 

 tion of the South, and not too shy, — never so 

 shy as he is reserved, with a delicate dignity of 

 manner and a love for deep recesses of green 

 leaves. His lines and finish are graceful as those 

 of a vase or a violin; he carries himself with a 

 sort of unhurried courtesy — just what one would 

 expect in so great a musician. Here is a fit 

 instrument, fine in every detail, through which 

 the very soul of music speaks. The song invari- 

 ably gives one the sense of a private hearing, 

 as if too rare and lofty to be addressed to the 

 multitude; it is attuned to vast silences of dawn 

 or twilight, and to haunts of green shadow that 

 might echo the pipes of Pan. Written for the 

 piano, as it has been again and again, it is 

 arranged as a bar or phrase of notes, followed 

 by a full rest; then another matchless phrase 

 ending in the softest evanishing trill, and another 

 rest; then a third, and so on — forming a regular 

 sequence of about five different phrases, with full 

 rests between, repeated over and over in the 

 same deliberate strain, as different as possible 

 from the rapid operatic outgush of the Mocking 

 Bird and his kin. 



