84 NATURE'S REALM. 
yield to the communion. But no; it is not 
possible. A revulsion occurs; our head sinks 
into our hands again; our hands fall down. 
What a flood of burning light is in our eyes, 
screened sun-glow! The whole living soul 
seems to die out of its home; all is dazed— 
dead. No! Hush! is that the voice that was 
sought? Through the dazed sense it comes so 
softly, purely sweet, from there on high— 
sacred height—a trembling, muffled, throttled 
warble, fluttering through the welkin, so sud- 
denly, sadly sweet. Surely it is from some 
heart-broke voice. Wasit watching the sorrow 
of some one below on earth and greeting out 
its sympathy ? Ah! thou sweetest warbler of 
the bright summer sky time; thou hast brought 
us back to ourselves again. We raise our face 
to the blinding blood and gold of the high sun 
sheen, blinded inasheet ofredand gold. Yes; 
involuntarily we stretch out our head and 
hands. We hang on the notes, glad'y en- 
thralled. Wecan count the song’s periods. It 
must, in spite of any potent wish—it has to 
cease. There; there now, for it has reached 
its pyre. What a speli—a sort of terror seizing 
you! It has blankly stopped after we have 
watched its fluttering, high ascension. The 
summer sun lark falls dead-like, with one soft, 
willy-willy wail, to its groundling nest. And 
what terrible thing is next to happen? The 
lark sank sudden with that one weary, weird 
wail. We would, too, die away into a welcome 
oblivion, but we are as transfixed. The lost 
notes still seem to come, still caught, and ring- 
ing in the ear more mellow from the expired 
distance. _So do reminiscences play tricks with 
us. With what a sudden, short shock—pang— 
does even that die away too! 
Spell-bound still. What a feeling and what 
a power to be enthralled by a sense lighter 
than air, yet how much more binding. Isn’t 
presentiment but fulfilling ? There is a quick- 
ening of the pulse and of the spell, for we now 
suddenly start and instantaneously realize what 
it is, though no sound or sight has yet im- 
pressed our sense. As one can by a memory 
sense reproduce past images or tones, can our 
presentiment instinctively materialize in the eye 
and in the ear that which is caught just on the 
verge of the happening? Can we get before 
the event? Such seemed to be the case now. 
Oh! that it would now in actuality quickly 
break this horrible, grinding, grating spell, 
that makes us now to shiver and shudder- 
Ha! there it comes, and we stick our fingers. 
in our ears to dull the crazing edge of it. 
How it shivers into us! Listen, if you can. 
"Tis a creak, creak, cracking knell, a chirp, 
chirp, chirping £ve//, kncll, knell, Oh! harsh- 
est, rusty bar of rusty, creaking bell. Oh! 
thou, too, rheumatic belfry bell. A7vzed/, knell, 
knell. So it continues to its crusty, clanging, 
creaking chirrup. And we are so close to it. 
But, as we rise, we see no one ; just hear that 
eternal, rasping #vel/. Is it determined to 
condemn us to an eternal horror? All we see 
is the rusty iron, whipping, lashing to and fro 
against the unseen ga’le. Whip, creak, clang 
and kvel/, Willitnevercease? Knell, knell, 
knell. Now at last we have caught up with 
the number of the strokes. Four, five, six; 
knell, knell, knell. We stand aching as we 
listen, thoroughly aroused, awakened, and now 
solemnly conscious of the about to happen ; 
aroused at last out of the mysterious life dream 
to the sense of the more mysterious death 
dream being slept by one now being borne 
toward the last resting place. And yet the 
flesh creeps, and that to the rusty, creaking 
antagonism of the death-telling and age-record- 
ing bell. <Awed/, knell, knell. We count on 
to nineteen, twen—no! no more. It stops 
there, but there is yet the dying ’e//, ’ed/, ‘edd. 
It dies away slowly in circles of sound like the 
little mourning warbler’s—sad sounds of sym- 
pathy. And still the dying sounds rise like 
billows and fall, and calm down to at last im- 
perceptible ripples, that live and linger only in 
the sensitive, retentive ear. The irony and the 
force of that bell! It has once more told life’s 
story, and tolled the last sad echo. It is clay 
to mould; yet so young, and in this glorious, 
glinting summer day! So life is told. 
