The Thrush's Nest

We watched a thrush yesterday skipping around the lawns, and around this time each year our 'house' thrush sits on the top-most branch at dusk and sings wonderfully to all who might listen.
Here is the results of Clare finding the thrush's nest:

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,
That overhung a molehill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound
With joy; and, often an intruding guest,
I watched her secret toils from day to day--
How true she warped the moss, to form a nest,
And modelled it within with wood and clay;
And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,
Ink-spotted-over shells of greeny blue;
And there I witnessed in the sunny hours
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as that sunshine and the laughing sky.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting one of my favourite poems on the net. I learned it some 75 years ago at school.

However, I thought you might like to know that the picture shown is of a blackbird’s nest-definitely not a song thrush, which is what Clare was writing about.

The song thrush’s eggs are “ink spotted over shells of greeny blue”, and its nest is “modelled within with wood and clay”.

Arborfield said...

Thanks for that... I must admit to being amazed at finding a comment on a post nearly 2 years old.

I stand corrected (!)

Regards...