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, The one only dwelling on earth which she loves. ’Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? she sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade— The mist and the river, the hill, sun, and shade; The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colours have all passed away from her eyes. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. THE BLACKBIRD. The Blackbird is familiar to us all. It is a thoroughly English bird, and, with its cousin the thrush, is not only one of the pleasantest features in our English spring and summer landscape, but both figure in our old poetry and ballads, as the “merle and the mavis,” “the blackbird and the throstle-cock;” for those old poets loved the country, and could not speak of the greenwood without the bird. When shaws are sheen and fields are fair, And leaves both large and long, ’Tis merry walk’ng in the green forest To hear the wild birds’ song; The wood merle sings, and will not cease, Sitting upon a spray; The merle and the mavis shout their fill, From morn till the set of day. [Illustration: BLACKBIRD AND NEST. [Page 26. ] The blackbird takes its name from a very intelligible cause—its perfectly black plumage, which, however, is agreeably relieved by the bright orange of its bill, the orange circles round its eyes, and its yellow feet; though this is peculiar only to the male, nor does he assume this distinguishing colour till his second year. The female is of a dusky-brown colour. [Sidenote: _The Notes of the Blackbird._] Sometimes the singular variety of a _white_ blackbird occurs, which seems to astonish even its fellow birds; the same phenomenon also occurs amongst sparrows; a fatal distinction to the poor birds, who are in consequence very soon shot.