ass 
WALDEN. 
lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like 
that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, 
when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful 
hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately soaring like a rip¬ 
ple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing 
the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin 
ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. 
This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness 
and poetry are associated with that sport. The Merlin 
it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for 
its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever 
witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor 
soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud re¬ 
liance in the fields of air; mounting again and again 
with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beauti¬ 
ful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then re¬ 
covering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set 
its foot on terra jirma. It appeared to have no com¬ 
panion in the universe, — sporting there alone, — and 
to need none but the morning and the ether with which 
it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth 
lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched 
it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens ? The 
tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an 
egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag; — or 
was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven 
of the rainbow’s trimmings and the sunset sky, and 
lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from 
earth ? Its eyry now some cliffy cloud. 
Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver 
and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of 
jewels. Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on 
the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from 
