</ 







98 THE FALL OF THE YEAR 



.,* We had often heard the geese go over before, but 

 '"'never such a flock as this, never such wild waking 

 "''^clangor, so clear, so far away, so measured, swift, 

 ^ and gone! 



I love the sound of the ocean surf, the roar of a^iox 

 winter gale in the leafless woods, the sough of the , 

 moss-hung cypress in the dark southern swamps. 

 } But no other voice of Nature is so strangely, deeply ^ 

 ', thrilling to me as the honk, honk, honk of the pass- - 

 \ ing geese. 



For what other voice, heard nowadays, of beast 

 or bird is so wild and free and far-resounding? Heard ; 

 ^in the solemn silence of the night, the notes fall as 

 .from the stars, a faint and far-off salutation, like the 

 call of sentinels down the picket line "All's well! 

 All 's well ! " Heard in the open day, when you can '.. 

 -/see the winged wedge splitting through the dull gray 



sky, the notes seem to cleave the dun clouds, driven ( 

 .down by the powerful wing-beats where the travel- 

 < ers are passing high and far beyond the reach of 

 our guns. 



The sight of the geese going over in the day, and 



>; the sound of their trumpetings, turn the whole world 



of cloud and sky into a wilderness, as wild and pri- 



>>meval a wilderness as that distant forest of the far 



> North west where the howl of wolves is still heard 



./by the trappers. Even that wilderness, however, is 



k passing ; and perhaps no one of us will ever hear the 



> "howl of wolves in the hollow snow-filled forests, as 



