SOUNDS. 
135 
youths’ singing, when I state that I perceived clearly 
that it was akin to the music of the cow, and they were 
at length one articulation of Nature. 
Begularly at half past seven, in one part of the sum¬ 
mer, after the evening train had gone by, the whippoor¬ 
wills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a 
stump by my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house. 
They would begin to sing almost with as much pre¬ 
cision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular 
time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. 
I had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their 
habits. Sometimes I heard four or five at once in dif¬ 
ferent parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind 
another, and so near me that I distinguished not only 
the cluck after each note, but often that singular buzzing 
sound like a fly in a spider’s web, only proportionally 
louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round 
me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a 
string, when probably I was near its eggs. They sang 
at intervals throughout the night, and were again as 
musical as ever just before and about dawn. 
When other birds are still the screech owls take up 
the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. 
Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise 
midnight hags I It is no honest and blunt tu-whit 
tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn 
graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lov¬ 
ers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal 
love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their 
wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the wood- 
side; reminding me sometimes of music and singing 
birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, 
the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They 
