54 BIRDS AND POETS 



pulled together and pulled till cables and hawser 

 snapped like threads. Back the procession started, 

 anchors were dragged or lost, immense new cables 

 were quickly taken ashore and fastened to trees; 

 but no use : trees were upturned, the cables stretched 

 till they grew small and sang like harpstrings, then 

 parted; back, back against the desperate efforts of 

 the men, till within a few feet of her old grave, 

 when there was a great commotion among the craft, 

 floats were overturned, enormous chains parted, co- 

 lossal timbers were snapped like pipestems, and, with 

 a sound that filled all the air, the steamer plunged 

 to the bottom again in seventy feet of water. 



I am glad to observe that all the poetry of the 

 midsummer harvesting has not gone out with the 

 scythe and the whetstone. The line of mowers was 

 a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too deeply 

 with the human backs turned up there to the sun, 

 and the sound of the whetstone, coming up from the 

 meadows in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. 

 But I find the sound of the mowing-machine and 

 the patent reaper are even more in tune with the 

 voices of Nature at this season. The characteristic 

 sounds of midsummer are the sharp, whirring cre- 

 scendo of the cicada or harvest fly, and the rasping, 

 stridulous notes of the nocturnal insects. The mow- 

 ing-machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is 

 like the hum of a locust or the shuffling of a mighty 

 grasshopper. More than that, the grass and the 



