The Birds' Calendar 



strangely filled with the vacuity of sound. At 

 long intervals the profound stillness is broken, 

 yet intensified, by the distant rawing of the 

 crows, or the coarse call-note of the flicker, or 

 the sudden merriment of the chickadee in a 

 tree close by ; but it is gone in an instant — the 

 sound engulfed in an ocean of frozen silence. 

 There is a potency in the sense of utter desola- 

 tion in the soundless forest on a winter's day 

 that is hardly surpassed by any display of nat- 

 ure's most tremendous energies. Nothing seems 

 more aptly to symbolize the spirit of winter in 

 its gloom, isolation, and grandeur, than the lone 

 sea-bird pursuing its wild, magnificent flight 

 over the turbulent main, before a darkly gather- 

 ing storm. 



The bleak, wild scenes of winter-life, such as 

 the driving snow-storm, the sombre landscape, 

 the noiseless passage of a hawk amid the trees, 

 the cutting wind that sways the leafless boughs 

 with dismal creak — 



" Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang," 



— the moaning pines, the cold light of day, 

 and the still colder and quickly gathering dark- 

 ness — these and all other ghastly things that 

 appertain to Nature's annual burial, constitute 



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