'the hermit thrush'

Robert Browning, under a Mediterranean sky, recalled an English thrush with its 'first fine careless rapture!'  I now turn to the song of the North American hermit thrush in T S Eliot's The Waste Land.  In Section V 'What the Thunder said' the poet, domiciled in post-World War One London, longs for the sound of water in a desolate land, 'Here is no water but only rock'.  He remembers the song of the hermit thrush:

"But sound of water over rock
Where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water..."

In his notes to the poem Eliot tells us that he has heard the thrush himself, cites the Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America  - 'purity of tone and exquisite modulation...' and notes that 'Its water dripping song is justly celebrated'

Here is Eliot the scholar, citing his references and making sure of the facts; here is Eliot the poet responding to a memory of birdsong and water in a dry and cracked internal landscape.