Thrush meynell ehl
A Thrush Before Dawn by Alice Maynell. Read for LibriVox.org by Esther. A voice peels in this end of night. A phrase of notes resembling stars. Single and spiritual notes of light.
What call they at my window-bars? The South, the past, the day to be, an ancient infelicity. Darkling deliberate what sings, this wonderful one, alone at peace. What wilder things than song, what things sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece, dearer than Italy, untold delight, and freshness centuries old.
And first, first loves a multitude, the exultation of their pain, ancestral childhood long renewed, and midnights of invisible rain, and gardens, gardens night and day, gardens and childhood all the way. What Middle Ages passionate, oh, passionless voice, what distant bells lodged in the hills, what palest state ill-rien, for it speaks, it tells, without desire, without dismay,
some moral and some yesterday. All natural things, but more. Whence came this yet remoter mystery? How do these starry notes proclaim, agraver still divinity? This hope, this sanctity of fear, O innocent throat, O human ear.
