Extract from “Nineteen eighty-four”, Part Two, Chapter II by George Orwell

Two words you may not have seen before:

• bough - a main branch of a tree. Rhymes with "cow."

• obeisance - a bow or gesture of respect. Pronounced oh-BAY-sənss.

Start reading here ➝ They were standing in the shade of hazel bushes. The sunlight, filtering through innumerable leaves, was still hot on their faces. ... An old, close-bitten pasture, with a footpath wandering across it and a molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side the boughs of the elm trees swayed just perceptibly in the breeze, and their leaves stirred faintly in dense masses like women's hair.

...

A thrush had alighted on a bough not five metres away, almost at the level of their faces. Perhaps it had not seen them. It was in the sun, they in the shade. It spread out its wings, fitted them carefully into place again, ducked its head for a moment, as though making a sort of obeisance to the sun, and then began to pour forth a torrent of song. In the afternoon hush the volume of sound was startling. Sometimes it stopped for a few seconds, spread out and resettled its wings, then swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness? ← Finish reading here.