The song of the thrush is remarkable for its rich, mellow intonation, and for the great variety of its notes.
Wordsworth’s Verses on the Thrush.
Unfortunately for the thrush, its exquisite power as a songster makes it by no means an unusual prisoner. You are often startled by hearing, from the doleful upper window of some dreary court or alley of London, or some other large town, an outpouring of joyous, full-souled melody from an imprisoned thrush, which, perfect as it is, saddens you, as being so wholly out of place. Yet who can say how the song of that bird may speak to the soul of many a town-imprisoned passer-by? Wordsworth thus touchingly describes an incident of this kind:—
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a thrush that sings loud; it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard,
In the silence of morning, the song of the bird.
Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail,
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove’s,