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, 1 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 



1 " As the pine shakes off the snow-flakes 

 From the midnight of its branches." 



Hiawatha^ xix. 

 



