NATURE AND THE POETS. 115 



fer that the fox shut up house in the winter like the 

 musk-rat : 



" The fox his hill-side cell forsakes, 



The musk-rat leaves his nook, 

 The bluebird in the meadow brakes 

 Is singing with the brook." 



The only one of these incidents that is characteristic 

 of a January thaw in the latitude of New England, 

 is the appearance of the musk rat. The fox is never 

 in his cell in winter, except he is driven there by the 

 hound, or by soft or wet weather, and the bluebird 

 does not sing in the brakes at any time of the year. 

 A severe stress of weather will drive the foxes off 

 the mountains, into the low, sheltered woods and 

 fields, and a thaw will send them back again. In the 

 winter the fox sleeps during the day upon a rock or 

 stone wall, or upon a snow bank, where he can com- 

 mand all the approaches, or else prowls stealthily 

 through the woods. 



But there is seldom a false note in any of Whit- 

 tier's descriptions of rural sights 'and sounds. What 

 a characteristic touch is that in one of his " Mount- 

 ain Pictures" : 



" The pasture bars that clattered as they fell." 



It is the only strictly native, original, and typical 

 sound he reports on that occasion. The bleating of 

 sheep, the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle, the 

 splash of the bucket in the well, " the pastoral cur- 

 few of the cow-bell," etc., are sounds we have heard 

 before in poetry, but that clatter of the pasture-bars 



