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| Bruno Liljefors |
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 toil 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 the sunshine and the laughing sky.
John Clare
from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin
John Clare, bird enthusiast, bird poet.
"I drank the sound with joy."
And that's the impression I get - that Clare was a man who needed nature to bring him
out of himself, to lift him up. The birds fed his soul.
I can relate.
