Woodland voices I have heard—
Laughing waters, beast and bird;
Red-squirrels jabb’ring while they eat,
Cones a-dropping at your feet;
Pecker diving for a worm,
Ringing echoes with each squirm;
Squawking jays and the palaver
Of a pheasant breaking cover;
But the strangest sound to me
Comes when winds blow fitfully,
In the darkness, like a moan—
Chilling to the marrow-bone,
Dying now upon the gale
Like a far-off cougar’s wail.
Now it rises—peevish, wild,
Like the fretting of a child;
With an easing wind the thing
Squeaks like monkeys jibbering.
Thus a leaning, scraping tree
Sounds its spookish minstrelsy,
When the night-wind, teasing so,
Starts it rocking to and fro.