WINTER VOICES 



pleasure still go on while the summer- 

 wearied earth lies wrapped in her winter 

 sleep. 



Night, stealing upon her in dusky 

 pallor, under cloudy skies, or silvering 

 her face with moonbeams and starlight, 

 brings other and wilder voices. Sol- 

 emnly the unearthly trumpet of the owl 

 resounds from his woodland hermitage, 

 the fox's gasping bark, wild and un- 

 canny, marks at intervals his wayward 

 course across the frozen fields on some 

 errand of love or freebooting, and, swell- 

 ing and falling with puff and lapse of 

 the night wind, as mournful and lone- 

 some as the voice of a vagrant spirit, 

 comes from the mountain ridges the 

 baying of a- hound, hunting alone and 

 unheeded, while his master basks in the 

 comfort of his fireside. 

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