AN AWAKENING 73 



scream, each one more harsh and wild than the last, 

 rings out from tree to tree. Other sounds — strange, 

 wild, grotesque — cannot even suffer an attempt to 

 describe them. All this through the darkness, the 

 black of which is now beginning to be " dipped in 

 grey." There is the snapping of the bill, too — a soft 

 click, a musical "pip, pip" — amidst all these uncouth 

 noises. On the whole, it is the grotesque in sound 

 — a carnival of hoarse, wild, grotesque inarticulations. 

 Amidst them, every now and then, one hears the great 

 sweep of pinions, and a shadowy form, just thicken- 

 ing on the gloom, is lost in the profounder gloom of 

 some tree that receives it. 



Most of the nests are in sad, drooping-boughed 

 firs — spruces, a name that suits them not — trees 

 whose very branches are a midnight, as Longfellow 

 has called them,^ in a great, though seldom-men- 

 tioned poem. Others are in grand old beeches, 

 which, with the slender white birch and the maple, 

 stand in open clearings amidst the shaggy firs, and 

 make this plantation a paradise. Sometimes, as the 

 herons fly out of one tree into another, they make a 

 loud, sonorous beating with their great wings, whilst 

 at others, they glide with long, silent-sounding 

 swishes, that seem a part of the darkness. Two 

 will, often, pursue each other, with harshest screams, 

 and, all at once, from one of them comes a shout of 

 wild, maniacal laughter, that sets the blood a-ting- 

 ling, and makes one a better man to hear. Whilst 

 sweeping, thus, in nuptial flight, about their nesting- 

 trees, they stretch out their long necks in front of 



^ " As the pine shakes off the snow-flakes 

 From the midnight of its branches." 



— Hiawatha^ xix. 

 E 



