198 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



lullaby that as surely sings to sleep as does the 

 cadenced sorrow of the wind in the pines or the 

 minor murmur of a mountain brook, intermit- 

 tently tossed over the hill by the night breeze. 

 Often at nightfall the " clackety clack, cow, cow, 

 cow " of the yellow-billed cuckoo sounds through 

 the Chocorua woods, as if a lanternless watchman 

 were making his rounds and sounding the hour 

 with his rattle. Often, too, some songbird will 

 rouse from sleep as if he heard the cuckoo watch- 

 man, going his rounds, pipe him a sleepy bar or 

 two of his day song, notes strangely vivid in the 

 perfumed darkness, then drowse again with the 

 melody half finished. But of all these the whip- 

 poor-wills are most persistent and loudest. They 

 greet the dusk with antiphonal chant, and when 

 they finally follow the shadows to rest in the 

 "darkest wood the choir of day takes their silence 

 for its matin bell. 



Something of Bolles's purity of diction and 

 sweet content in the gentle joy of life in the fields 

 and woods, the sapphire cadences of distant moun- 

 tain peaks and the chrysoprase tremolo of young 

 leaves, seems to have come from the song of the 



