of strange warblers, the call of passing plovers--all are suggestive of
instincts, movements, and highways that are unseen, unaccountable, and
full of mystery. Little wonder that the most thrilling poem ever written
to a bird begins:

Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

The question, the mystery in that "certain flight" I never felt so vividly
as from my roof. Here I have often heard the reed-birds and the water-fowl
passing. Sometimes I have heard them going over in the dark. One night I
remember particularly, the sky and the air were so clear and the geese so
high in the blue.

Over the fields and wide silent marshes such passing is strange enough.
But here I stood above a sleeping city of men, and far above me, so far
that I could only hear them, holding their northward way through the
starlit sky, they passed--whither? and how guided? Was the shining dome of
the State House a beacon? Did they mark the light at Marblehead?




THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK