NOVEMBER VOICES 



The woods are full of unlipped voices 

 speaking one with another in pleading, 

 in anger, in soft tones of endearment ; 

 and one hears his name called so dis- 

 tinctly that he answers and calls again, 

 but no answer is vouchsafed him, only 

 moans and shrieks and mocking laughter, 

 till one has enough of wild voices and 

 longs for a relapse of silence. 



More softly it is broken when through 

 the still air comes the cheery note of 

 the chickadee and the little trumpet 

 of his comrade the nuthatch and far 

 away the muffled beat of the grouse's 

 drum, or from a distance the mellow 

 baying of a hound and its answering 

 echoes, swelling and dying on hilltop 

 or glen, or mingling in melodious con- 

 fusion. 



From skyward comes the clangor of 

 clarions, wild and musical, proclaiming 

 the march of gray cohorts of geese ad- 

 vancing southward through the hills and 

 dales of cloudland. There come, too, 

 the quick whistling beat of wild ducks' 

 pinions, the cry of a belated plover, and 

 the creaking voice of a snipe. Then the 

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