. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. ur of a mountain brook, intermit-tently tossed over the hill by the night at nightfall the clackety clack, cow, cow,cow of the yellow-billed cuckoo sounds throughthe Chocorua woods, as if a lanternless watchmanwere making his rounds and sounding the hourwith his rattle. Often, too, some songbird willrouse from sleep as if he heard the cuckoo watch-man, going his rounds, pipe him a sleepy bar ortwo of his day song, notes strangely vivid in theperfumed darkness, then drowse again with themelody half finished. But of all these the whip-poor-wil
. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. ur of a mountain brook, intermit-tently tossed over the hill by the night at nightfall the clackety clack, cow, cow,cow of the yellow-billed cuckoo sounds throughthe Chocorua woods, as if a lanternless watchmanwere making his rounds and sounding the hourwith his rattle. Often, too, some songbird willrouse from sleep as if he heard the cuckoo watch-man, going his rounds, pipe him a sleepy bar ortwo of his day song, notes strangely vivid in theperfumed darkness, then drowse again with themelody half finished. But of all these the whip-poor-wills are most persistent and loudest. Theygreet the dusk with antiphonal chant, and whenthey finally follow the shadows to rest in thedarkest wood the choir of day takes their silencefor its matin bell. Something of Bolless purity of diction andsweet content in the gentle joy of life in the fieldsand woods, the sapphire cadences of distant moun-tain peaks and the chrysoprase tremolo of youngleaves, seems to have come from the song of the. BIRDS OF CHOCORUA 199 white-throated sparrow that sings all day aboutChocorua. Peabody bird we call the white-throat, from long custom, but to me his notes,clear, sweet and infinitely refreshing, seem tochant in accelerating diminuendo, hap-pi-ness,hap-pi-ness, happiness, till I lose the quiveringcadences in an infinity of distance where sightand sound blend in the passing of dear white-throated sparrow comes to the hillswith the pink buds of the trailing arbutus, whoseblooms are nowhere else so white and fair, andsomething of their fragrance seems always tocome from his song. In little nooks where theearly spring sunlight wells in pools of goldenwarmth the perfumes of the arbutus blooms andof the white-throats song come first, and theylinger long into the summer where cool Northernhillsides hold the spring in their shadows. Some-times the autumn, too, gives us a rare rebloomingof the arbutus, and the white-throat sings his songof pur
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booki, booksubjectnaturalhistory
