The poem records the memories awakening in a country girl in London on hearing a thrush sing in the early morning.

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.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripp'd with her pail, And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The only one dwelling on earth that she loves.

But speaking in less general language, it is to follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections of our nature.

However, Peter J. Manning pointed out that: [The] stanza was omitted as early as the 1802 reprinting of the Lyrical Ballads, long before Lamb's comments, just quoted, which occur in a letter of 1815 responding to Wordsworth's present of the just-published two-volume edition of his works.