how perfect an invention is glass! the sun rises with a salute, and leaves the world with a farewell to our windows. to have instead of opaque shutters, or dull horn or paper, a material like solidified air, which reflects the sun thus brightly!—thoreau.
o-day a slaty sky, accompanied by vaporous clouds throughout the afternoon, is succeeded by a pale sunset, a vivid primrose band extending far, and lingering late along the southern horizon.
i hear an angry wind at night, first tongued by the distant trees. rising close to the edge of the river, the copse catches the least breath of the west, transmitting its voice through the trees. each tree thus becomes a harp or viol played upon by the air in motion, producing a varied music according to the character of its spray. how different the sound of the summer wind! the whispering and rustling of trillions of living leaves; one might distinguish the season by the sense of hearing 120alone. now that vegetation is devoid of foliage, there is so much less to obstruct the current of the air brought pure and undefiled from the western plains. this air, additionally sifted and clarified by its passage through countless woods and primeval forests, i inhale in full draughts within my comfortable room. gathered by the cold air-boxes, this oxygen and nitrogen is tempered and warmed by a single pound of steam below, before rising fresh and delicious through the registers above. thus even in midwinter do i receive the essence of the meadows and the woods.
not less comfort and delight do i owe to glass than to coal. it retains the heat and excludes the frost. scarcely the space of a foot separates my easy chair and summer warmth from falling flakes and wintry cold. it lets in the balm of the sky and the grace of the leafless trees; it serves to simulate summer. transparent to light and to outward forms, glass is merely translucent to sounds. i look out and see the trees rock and toss beneath the gale; i listen, and hear the wind rejoicing in his strength. light and sunshine stream through my window-pane as though it were a part of the atmosphere. it is almost like the atmosphere—transparent, invisible, inodorous. no material used in the construction of the house imparts such an air 121of richness from without as polished plate-glass. is it not equally desirable within, to look out through? let the carpets, if necessary, have less depth of pile; but let in the landscape and the light as clearly as we may. to look at exterior objects through vitreous waves is to cheat the sight and rob pleasant surroundings of their charm.
again, the glass that brings the landscape into my room shuts out the external world as readily as it lets it in—in the form of stained glass it passes from transparent to translucent, but still retains its life through color. i would have in my hall above the landing a wheel-window of ancient stained glass to render daylight doubly beautiful and refined—a flood of violet like that concentrated and diffused by the windows of the tall clere-story of tours. but the gorgeous stained glass of mediæval days, such as still blazes in the old cathedrals, is an art of the past, and my ship contained it not amid her precious stores.
yet once more is glass transformed, and from transparent and translucent is changed to opaque—opaque, yet not opaque. neither clear nor colored, it possesses still more life in this its other form. for my mirrors not only receive light and color, but stamp them indelibly upon their surface. placed 122in certain positions, they even enable me to see through opaque surfaces. by a glance into the hall through the door of the room where i sit i may discern what transpires in the adjoining room, though divided from it by a solid wall. without my mirrors i could not even recognize my outward self. they double the objects in my house; they double the number of my guests; they possess a double life. they take the place of a daubigny, for do they not reflect the daubigny? and lovely woman, how could she look so sweet without her second self—her mirror!
the primroses in my garden are harbingers of spring; the primrose band in the south was the precursor of storm. all night the wind raved, bringing snow and still more wind with returning day. the weather-cock creaks ominously in its socket, pointing alternately west and northwest. i note a drop of twenty degrees in the temperature, and hereafter i shall distrust the primrose band.
again the strange light in the south, shining brightly throughout the afternoon. this band appears most vividly through a vista of the grounds which focuses a distant slope crowned with deciduous trees and isolated pines. i notice it, at times, during late autumn and early spring, or on mild winter days when the moisture of the 123atmosphere may be perceptibly felt. the weather-vane always points to it, though no air be stirring—indeed, it only occurs during a calm. glowing through the skeleton trees, a lustrous primrose or lively crocus, it illumines and transfigures the entire horizon of the south, as if inviting to follow it to a blander clime. it seems almost more beautiful than sunlight; it is colored sunlight screened from glare. when i attempt to trace it to the range of the southern hills it keeps receding to the hills and trees beyond—always present, ever out of reach. an observer standing there, in turn, would see it farther on, and these farther hills and trees would yield its luminousness to the landscape more southward still.
is it typical of life—man grasping at an object only to see it disappear, seizing a pleasure to find it evanescent, relinquishing a hope for one yet more ephemeral; ever reaching for happiness to meet with disappointment at the goal?
whence its origin? in what distant sky does it first appear? the swift wings of the hawk might trace it to its source; for me it is intangible. doubtless with a word the meteorologists would dispel the charm it holds. i prefer to regard it as an occult force, a mysterious weather-sign to flash upon the wintry gloom and foretell the 124coming storm. in the present instance it brought yet more moisture, and was succeeded the following day by fog and driving mist, changing in the evening to sudden cold and wind.
a windy moonlight night, with clouds chasing each other like crests of advancing waves. the moon rides high in the west; the strong wind sweeps from the west. æolus and all his retinue are abroad. the hillside trees toss and boom like the sea—it is high tide in the air. the air becomes a sea, the clouds its surge, the trees the shingle upon which it beats. it fascinates like the sea! when the moon appears between the rifts it seems stationary; when partly concealed under a white cloud, it appears coursing rapidly westward, while the clouds seem traveling slowly eastward. the moon then becomes the voyager, and the squadrons of the sky the loiterers. its luminousness is but slightly masked by the silver clouds, their translucency making them seemingly a source of light. every now and then it disappears beneath a mass of inky breakers, gilding their outer crests ere taking its sudden plunge; it looks as if it were dropping from the sky. almost immediately it reappears, so fast the clouds are moving. anon it dips beneath a snowy surge, to re-emerge and sink below a cimmerian roller, just as a swimmer 125dives into and is lost in the surf. meanwhile, the wind roars like an angry sea. this glory of the wintry night my glass brings into my room. but the silver lining and life of the moonlit clouds can not be traced in written words, nor the varied voices of the wind be rendered into musical bars. the moon and the sun shine so that all may see. the wind blows so that all may hear.
i hear a new creak in my neighbor’s weather-vane amid the moaning of the wind; or is it the repeated far-off blowing of a horn? twice on my going to the door the sound suddenly ceases, to continue fitfully on my return. i discover it is produced merely by the side-light above my writing-table. do we not thus frequently attribute ulterior motives to causes which exist only in imagination, or whose source originates with ourselves? often is the humming in our ear.
at times the small black fly upon the pane
may seem the black ox of the distant plain.
how deceptive is sound! the leaf-cricket’s chant on hot summer nights seems to proceed from the lawn, rods away; he is singing in the honeysuckle vine a few feet overhead. not unfrequently, when sitting within doors, am i obliged to consider whether the monotonous humming i hear 126is the planing-mill far remote or the purring of the cat—my pet maltese, who looks at me with her beryl-like eyes and arches her back to be stroked. but though she pricks up her ears when i scratch the under surface of the table, she does not long mistake the counterfeit for the wainscot mouse.
little sounds, like the petty annoyances of life, are frequently the most unpleasant. a great annoyance one meets forcibly, knowing it to be a necessary evil that must be put out of the way. the snake is killed or evaded; the fly remains to harass. the roaring of the gale, the downpour from the sky—sounds loud and violent—are soothing rather than the reverse; the rattling of a window-blind is far more annoying. who but the man that is filing it can hear without a shudder the filing of a saw, and who but the katydid himself can passively endure the katydid’s stridulation?
a monotonous sound, providing it be not a rasping sound, the ear becomes accustomed to, and misses when it ceases. the ticking of a clock, in itself unmusical, is, nevertheless, soothing; you awaken when it suddenly stops. the nocturnal cricket’s reiterated cry is a somnolent sound—a voice of the darkness and the dew. the grasshoppers’ jubilant chorus sings away the fleeting summer hour, and by its 127rising and falling pulsation marks the waxing and waning of the year. even when immelodious, most sounds of external nature are not irritating. the rattling of the window-pane exasperates—one intuitively anathematizes the carpenter; the angry creaking of the boughs has a meaning, and one accepts it as a fitting and necessary accompaniment of the gale. the harsh barking of a dog rouses one from slumber; it is plainly in most cases an annoyance which has no just reason for existence—the neighborhood were better off without it.
the railroad whistles, scarcely farther removed and far more plainly heard, are not annoying. at once they are accepted by the mind as possessing a reason. for behind the whistle are the vast driving-wheels, the passengers, the mails, and the merchandise. when i hear the locomotive’s whistle i feel the locomotive’s power, and the significance of its strength. it is the voice of might and speed; the exultant neigh of the great iron charger. it sounds the hours for me. day after day—night, morning, and afternoon—with the same exactitude, scarcely a minute after the engineer has opened the sounding-valve, do the cars, arriving and departing, pass along the opposite shore of the river. far off among the distant valleys resounds the clatter of the oncoming train; now lost for a moment, 128now more distinctly heard. a mile and a half away on the still night air the whistle sounds, and the awakened echoes respond. i hear the roar through the gap of the hills, the crash across the bridge, the reverberating flight along the bank, the gradual receding and absorption of the sound. nightly, expectantly, i listen for it, and miss it when the train is late.
how much does not the arrival of the night express signify! how much of pain or pleasure to those it bears! friends who have parted, and friends who are waiting; news sad and joyous; regrets and hopes; hatred and love; laughter and tears; all the emotions and passions harbored in human hearts are present in the rapid flight of the train. the engineer at the throttle, the fireman who supplies the fuel—calm, watchful, serene at their posts amid the deafening roar and jar—i think of them when the whistle sounds, plunging onward through the darkness and the storm.
what a fascination exists in the flight of a train—an exhilaration to those on board, an ever-recurring marvel to those who witness it pass by! a speck in the distance, it momentarily enlarges till, thundering past, it instantly recedes, as swiftly lost as it was swift to appear. onward it flies, annihilating space, outspeeding time, flinging the mile-posts behind, bearing its burden to 129remote destinations. a moment it pauses to slake its thirst, or to deposit a portion of its burden, replacing it with fresh freight in waiting. still onward it flies, linking villages and towns, spanning streams, connecting valleys, tunneling hills, joining states. ever the crash and the roar, the great trail of smoke and steam, the engineer at the throttle—calm, watchful, serene—plunging through the darkness and the storm! this the whistle means for me.
instantly i detect the whistles of the different roads, some more musical, some more acute, some deeper, more sonorous in tone. varying in resonance according to the state of the atmosphere, they apprise me of the temperature without, like the audible vibration of the rails themselves when passed over by the cars. clear and musical in the early summer mornings, during cold weather they are more sibilant and piercing. they are a weather-vane to the ear, blown by heat or cold, responsive to the moisture or the dryness of the air. i observe similar acoustic effects in the tones of the distant bells. so that i may often prognosticate the weather as surely by external sounds as by the shifting barometer of the hills.
even through my windows i like to analyze the sentiment of animate sounds. 130“the nature of sounds in general,” remarks the author of sylva sylvarum, “hath been imperfectly observed; it is one of the subtellest peeces of nature.” during a ramble through the woods and fields i am impressed by the various emotions conveyed by bird voices alone. through them the woods and fields acquire an added meaning; they are the interpreters of nature. thus, the voice of the jay is a signal to inform his companions of danger; the scream of the hawk, a note of menace to intimidate his prey and cause it to reveal its whereabouts. the woodpecker’s tap is a sound of industry. the mourning-dove’s notes express sorrow; the hermit-thrush’s, ecstasy; the veery’s, solitude; the white-throated sparrow’s, content. the voices of the bluebird and song-sparrow are sounds of welcome, an exordium of spring. the plaintive whistle of the wood-pewee, the liquid warble of the purple finch, and the refrain of many a companion songster, it would require the fine ear and fancy of the poet to interpret aright. perhaps frederick tennyson well defines the sentiment they express in his melodious rendering of the blackbird’s song:
the blackbird sings along the sunny breeze
his ancient song of leaves and summer boon;
rich breath of hayfields streams through whispering trees;
131and birds of morning trim their bustling wings,
and listen fondly, while the blackbird sings.
and how deliciously one of the sweet old swabian singers has also voiced the blackbird of europe, and interpreted his rippling strain:
vög’le im tannenwald pfeifet so hell—
pfeifet de wald aus und ein, wo wird mein schätzle sein?
vög’le im tannenwald pfeifet so hell.
songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear—
whistleth the wood out and in, where hath my sweetheart been?
songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear.
is it a minnesinger? i wonder; for i can not place the poet who hymned the feathered minstrel so sweetly. my german friend the professor, who improvises in music as deftly as heine improvised in verse, and to whom i repeated the lines the other day, was struck anew by their haunting melody. seating himself at the piano, he immediately set them to this exquisite accompaniment. the music has been ringing in my ears ever since—a very echo of the songster, rising clear and jubilant from the shade of the wood. the words have been set to music before, a version being included in that melodious collection of national, student, and hunting songs entitled deutscher liederschatz. but this is commonplace compared 132to the rendition of my german friend. try it those of you who have a voice to try; or let your sweetheart try it for you. you will then appreciate the consummate art of the music—the ascending scale of the second bar felicitously phrasing the whistle of the bird, and the falling inflection of the third happily portraying the cool, shadowy depths of the wood. and how like a silvery bird note of june the upper “g” in the seventh bar sounds the close of the refrain!
no poet or prosatist, however, comes so near to the bird as the great prose-poet of the wiltshire downs:
“the bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind—a voice of the grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through that slender tone. sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched with breadths of open bud, the odor of the air, the color of the daffodil—all that is delicious and beloved of spring-time are expressed in his song. genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in the bough from which he sings, rises without thought. nor is it necessary that it should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. but yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his call i heard the sweet-brier wind rushing over the young grass.”[10]
10. richard jefferies. field and hedgerow.
just what emotion the caw of the crow conveys i am at a loss to determine, unless 135it be self-complacency—a harsh way of expressing it, it would seem. his notes sound more like anger; and in the woods he certainly does quarrel with the owls, the song-birds, and his own kindred. but his apparent anger may be only feigned, and his voice belie his real character. assuredly, there was never a more self-complacent tread than the crow’s on a grain field. the farmer and the scarecrow at once become secondary to him, and pilfering becomes almost a virtue, he pilfers with such grace. his tread is as majestic as the soaring of the hawk, and though black as night and evil, his plumage glistens as brightly as light and purity. he seems a true autochthon of the soil. it is much in the way things are done, after all; boldness often passes for innocence, and self-confidence begets security.
gladness, serene contentment, is most strongly expressed to me by the bobolink, the “okalee” of the starling, and the singular medley of the catbird. to be sure, the catbird frequently justifies his name, and is anything but an agreeable songster; but to make amends for his introductory discords he frequently gives us a delightful palinode. plaintiveness, sadness over the departed summer, is conveyed by the blackbird’s warble fluted over fields of golden-rod; it is expressed in the trembling notes of the 136yellow-bird, as he scatters the thistle’s floss to the winds.
if we would carefully analyze the speech of external nature, i doubt not we could trace some well-defined sentiment in nearly all animate sounds; assuredly in very many of the voices of birds, animals, and insects. for nature’s moods and tenses are conveyed as strongly through the tympanum of the ear as through the retina of the eye. their correct interpretation depends upon our inner sight and hearing. i am not sure that in man’s relation to nature the sense of hearing does not contribute almost as much enjoyment as the sense of seeing. certainly, nature would seem but half complete without her characteristic voices. think of her wrapped in the winding-sheet of eternal silence, a mere mummy, with no song of bird or whisper of wind to impart animation to her scenes. color and form are but half the landscape; it is sound that gives it life, and renders it companionable. what is winter, in one sense, but absence of sound, not merely the absence of bird and insect voices, but the rustling of leaves and grasses, the murmur of waters, the life and movement of growing vegetation!
are not the first signs of spring conveyed through sound? ere yet a song-bird can find an utterance, or grass-blade impart a sense of resurrected life i hear the 137cracking of the ice and the gurgling of the frost-freed rills. the crow announces the change before the snowdrop comes, and the wild geese proclaim it from the sky before the sallows invite the precocious bee. no doubt the bee is already waiting for the flower, and winnows it into bloom; for no sooner is the corolla ready to expand than i hear his murmurous wings. high in the willow catkins; low down in the horn of the skunk-cabbage; bending the yellow bloom of the first dog-tooth violet, his hum of industry is heard. the bee is perhaps the first constant spring musician, though his is not the earliest vernal voice. the pushing daffodils of the perennial flower-border speak to me of spring, the choir of the toads and hylodes announces it even more emphatically.
how we should miss the voice of chanticleer were the domestic fowl to become silent! it never occurred to me how important a role he plays until the author of the bohemians of the latin quarter makes him serve as a matutinal alarm to schaunard in lieu of the time-piece he has pawned. and herrick, too, in his grange, or private wealth, has the domestic fowl serve a similar purpose:
though clock
to tell how night draws hence, i’ve none,
a cock
i have to sing how day draws on.
138we might rise and retire, indeed, with the clock of the cock, and at all times of day and at all seasons we would sadly miss his voice were he subject to laryngeal troubles. it is a cheery and companionable sound, the absence of which would cause an appreciable void. many sounds not strictly belonging to outward nature become complementary to her through familiarity, or through the surroundings amid which they are heard. thus the hills and valleys speak through the roar of the railroad train, and the harvest fields find a fitting tongue in the thrashing machine. a domestic voice rather than a voice of nature, the cock’s crow is, notwithstanding this, associated with nature and rural scenes. it is more a voice of the country and a pulsation of the rural landscape than an expression of urban surroundings. the city hems it in; the country expands it. orpheus might pause to listen to it when sounded from an autumnal upland, it is so resonant and sonorous. so much does the scene, or the conditions amid which sounds are uttered, affect the sounds themselves.
as a purely wild sound of nature—the nature of our own woods and fields—the cry of the owl is, perhaps, unrivaled. the bark of the fox has some analogy to it in point of wildness, except that his voice is always further removed. i hear it on 139moonlight winter nights following the undulations of the wooded hills—a short sharp bark thrice repeated at rather prolonged intervals. it is an eerie sound, the cry of the vulpine freebooter, ranging his native woods through the frosty winter nights. i never look up at the fox’s pelt slung across the portière-rod in the smoking-room without a feeling of regret for the lissom life that was slain. the grand brush that steadied him in his flight; the sharp pointed nose, once alive to every atom of the atmosphere; the fine soft fur, beautiful still in death, appeal mutely to me for a life wantonly sacrificed. i care not how many grouse and ground-birds may have fallen victims to his cunning—they were his rightful prey, the spoil of his domain.
the drumming of the ruffed-grouse imparts a sense of life and companionship to the woods such as few other sounds convey. bonasa umbella! there is a whir of vigor in his very name. every one should be born a sportsman to appreciate his glorious crescendo; hunting is given to man of the gods, xenophon rightly said. the grouse is the woodland guide, the alcaid who holds the keys to all its guarded recesses, the courier who knows every lane and passage that thread the forest depths. accept his invitation, and you are conducted into hidden nooks, and presented glimpses 140of sylvan beauty of whose existence you would otherwise never have dreamed. his roll-call is a stimulus to exercise, an excuse to explore the covers. onward and onward and still onward he leads; now amid a sun-flecked vista of tree-trunks, now through a thicket of intertwining saplings, now to a woodland antechamber frescoed with october colors, now up some lofty hillside overlooking the empurpled valley. a taste of the bitter he also mixes with the sweet, as when flushed for the third or fourth time, weary of pursuit, he leads to an almost impenetrable thicket of bramble, perchance to skim off unseen on hearing your approach, or to dive deep down into a precipitous glen, only to mislead by suddenly wheeling up the hillside in a long deceptive flight. most noticeably in the spring, and frequently in the autumn, and on tempered winter days do i hear the music of his wings, far away in some sequestered glade, beating a sylvan tattoo—most picturesque of all woodland sounds; it is as if the woods themselves were speaking.
the squirrel’s bark is emphatically a sylvan expression. he knows its effect upon the listener, and selects a bland, sunshiny day when he may be distinctly heard. but only at a safe distance, for has not the fox taught him caution, and the grouse the wile of placing a tree-trunk between himself 141and the double-barrel? were i to analyze the sentiment of the squirrel’s bark, i should term it an utterance of derision. not altogether derision, however; for besides a snarling tone, it has a perceptible sound of cracking and crunching, as of nuts and acorns being husked and split by a rodent’s tooth.
an eery cry is the “ssh-p! ssh-p!” of the twisting snipe—two fifths a whistle, two fifths a cry, while to the nervous sportsman the other fifth is a jeer. a guttural cry, a strange raucous cry, a very voice of the treacherous ooze and the rustling sedge. it can not be put into words, and only the snipe himself can sound it. most voices of the marsh are characteristic; it has its distinctive gamut of sound. the cheerful music of the woodlands is wanting; its speech is pitched in a graver key, in keeping with its solitary haunts where syrinx ever murmurs through her murmuring reeds. how expressive its many-sounding tongues—the boom of the bittern, the harsh quack of the heron, the scream of hawk and kildeer, the multitudinous calls of water birds—
cries that might
be echoes of a water-spirit’s song.
all through the spring and autumn nights countless wings are cleaving the upper air, 142bearing the hurrying voyagers in search of distant climes—flocks of plover and woodcock, skeins of snipe and shore-birds, throngs of ducks and geese, voicing their way through the darkness, league after league, hour after hour on their long journey of migration.
i look for drought and heat when the cicada shrills. the rhythm of the cricket’s creak tells me if the night be hot or cold. i see the gathering rain-clouds when the tree-toad croaks and the hair-bird trills. the bluebird warbles, “it is spring”; a thousand throats proclaim the summer. sounds from the woods, sounds from the waters, sounds from the fields, sounds from the air! the infinite beauty of sound! are not nature’s voices one of her most endearing charms?
how the gas-burner and window-pane have led me to digress! but even from my comfortable room it is sometimes pleasant to look out beyond the storm and bask in the luminousness of the primrose band.
