NOVEMBER 



29 



Everything stands silent and expectant. If I 

 listen, I hear only the note of a chickadee, our 

 most common bird at present, most identified with 

 our forests, or perchance the scream of a jay, or 

 from the solemn depths of the woods I hear toll- 

 ing far away the knell of one departed. Thought 

 rushes jn to fill the vacuum. As you walk, how- 

 ever, the partridge bursts away from the foot of a 

 shrub oak, like its own dry fruit ; immortal bird ! 

 This sound still startles us. The silent, dry, 

 almost leafless, certainly fruitless woods, you won- 

 der what cheer that bird can find in them. 



THOKEAU: Autumn. 



30 



The dear wholesome color of shrub-oak leaves, 

 so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have 

 put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and 

 thin like the white-oak leaves, but full - veined 

 and plump as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather 

 on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of 

 the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned 

 toward the late bleached and russet fields. ... I 

 love and could embrace the shrub oak, with its 

 scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, 

 lowly whispering to me, akin to winter thoughts, 

 and sunsets, to all virtue ; coverts which the hare 

 and the partridge seek, and I too seek. 



THOREAU: Autumn. 



