But let me change the strain and contemplate for a few moments this
feathered bandit,—this bird with the mark of Cain upon him, _Lanius
borealis,_—the great shrike or butcher-bird. Usually the character of a
bird of prey is well defined; there is no mistaking him. His claws, his
beak, his head, his wings, in fact his whole build, point to the fact
that he subsists upon live creatures; he is armed to catch them and to
slay them. Every bird knows a hawk and knows him from the start, and is
on the lookout for him. The hawk takes life, but he does it to maintain
his own, and it is a public and universally known fact. Nature has sent
him abroad in that character, and has advised all creatures of it. Not
so with the shrike; here she has concealed the character of a murderer
under a form as innocent as that of the robin. Feet, wings, tail,
color, head, and general form and size are all those of a
songbird,—very much like that master songster, the mockingbird,—yet
this bird is a regular Bluebeard among its kind. Its only
characteristic feature is its beak, the upper mandible having two sharp
processes and a sharp hooked point. It cannot fly away to any distance
with the bird it kills, nor hold it in its claws to feed upon it. It
usually impales its victim upon a thorn, or thrusts it in the fork of a
limb. For the most part, however, its food seems to consist of
insects,—spiders, grasshoppers, beetles, etc. It is the assassin of the
small birds, whom it often destroys in pure wantonness, or merely to
sup on their brains, as the Gaucho slaughters a wild cow or bull for
its tongue. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Apparently its victims
are unacquainted with its true character and allow it to approach them,
when the fatal blow is given. I saw an illustration of this the other
day. A large number of goldfinches in their fall plumage, together with
snowbirds and sparrows, were feeding and chattering in some low bushes
back of the barn. I had paused by the fence and was peeping through at
them, hoping to get a glimpse of that rare sparrow, the white-crowned.
Presently I heard a rustling among the dry leaves as if some larger
bird was also among them. Then I heard one of the goldfinches cry out
as if in distress, when the whole flock of them started up in alarm,
and, circling around, settled in the tops of the larger trees. I
continued my scrutiny of the bushes, when I saw a large bird, with some
object in its beak, hopping along on a low branch near the ground. It
disappeared from my sight for a few moments, then came up through the
undergrowth into the top of a young maple where some of the finches had
alighted, and I beheld the shrike. The little birds avoided him and
flew about the tree, their pursuer following them with the motions of
his head and body as if he would fain arrest them by his murderous
gaze. The birds did not utter the cry or make the demonstration of
alarm they usually do on the appearance of a hawk, but chirruped and
called and flew about in a half-wondering, half-bewildered manner. As
they flew farther along the line of trees the shrike followed them as
if bent on further captures. I then made my way around to see what the
shrike had caught, and what he had done with his prey. As I approached
the bushes I saw the shrike hastening back. I read his intentions at
once. Seeing my movements, he had returned for his game. But I was too
quick for him, and he got up out of the brush and flew away from the
locality. On some twigs in the thickest part of the bushes I found his
victim,—a goldfinch. It was not impaled upon a thorn, but was carefully
disposed upon some horizontal twigs,—laid upon the shelf, so to speak.
It was as warm as in life, and its plumage was unruffled. On examining
it I found a large bruise or break in the skin on the back of the neck,
at the base of the skull. Here the bandit had no doubt griped the bird
with his strong beak. The shrike’s blood-thirstiness was seen in the
fact that he did not stop to devour his prey, but went in quest of
more, as if opening a market of goldfinches. The thicket was his
shambles, and if not interrupted, he might have had a fine display of
titbits in a short time.
The shrike is called a butcher from his habit of sticking his meat upon
hooks and points; further than that, he is a butcher because he devours
but a trifle of what he slays.
A few days before, I had witnessed another little scene in which the
shrike was the chief actor. A chipmunk had his den in the side of the
terrace above the garden, and spent the mornings laying in a store of
corn which he stole from a field ten or twelve rods away. In traversing
about half this distance, the little poacher was exposed; the first
cover going from his den was a large maple, where he always brought up
and took a survey of the scene. I would see him spinning along toward
the maple, then from it by an easy stage to the fence adjoining the
corn; then back again with his booty. One morning I paused to watch him
more at my leisure. He came up out of his retreat and cocked himself up
to see what my motions meant. His forepaws were clasped to his breast
precisely as if they had been hands, and the tips of the fingers thrust
into his vest pockets. Having satisfied himself with reference to me,
he sped on toward the tree. He had nearly reached it, when he turned
tail and rushed for his hole with the greatest precipitation. As he
neared it, I saw some bluish object in the air closing in upon him with
the speed of an arrow, and, as he vanished within, a shrike brought up
in front of the spot, and with spread wings and tail stood hovering a
moment, and looking in, then turned and went away. Apparently it was a
narrow escape for the chipmunk, and, I venture to say, he stole no more
corn that morning. The shrike is said to catch mice, but it is not
known to attack squirrels. He certainly could not have strangled the
chipmunk, and I am curious to know what would have been the result had
he overtaken him. Probably it was only a kind of brag on the part of
the bird,—a bold dash where no risk was run. He simulated the hawk, the
squirrel’s real enemy, and no doubt enjoyed the joke.
On another occasion, as I was riding along a mountain road early in
April, a bird started from the fence where I was passing, and flew
heavily to the branch of a near apple-tree. It proved to be a shrike
with a small bird in his beak. He thrust his victim into a fork of a
branch, then wiped his bloody beak upon the bark. A youth who was with
me, to whom I pointed out the fact, had never heard of such a thing,
and was much incensed at the shrike. “Let me fire a stone at him,” said
he, and jumping out of the wagon, he pulled off his mittens and fumbled
about for a stone. Having found one to his liking, with great
earnestness and deliberation he let drive. The bird was in more danger
than I had imagined, for he escaped only by a hair’s breadth; a
guiltless bird like the robin or sparrow would surely have been slain;
the missile grazed the spot where the shrike sat, and cut the ends of
his wings as he darted behind the branch. We could see that the
murdered bird had been brained, as its head hung down toward us.
The shrike is not a summer bird with us in the Northern States, but
mainly a fall and winter one; in summer he goes farther north. I see
him most frequently in November and December. I recall a morning during
the former month that was singularly clear and motionless; the air was
like a great drum. Apparently every sound within the compass of the
horizon was distinctly heard. The explosions back in the cement
quarries ten miles away smote the hollow and reverberating air like
giant fists. Just as the sun first showed his fiery brow above the
horizon, a gun was discharged over the river. On the instant a shrike,
perched on the topmost spray of a maple above the house, set up a loud,
harsh call or whistle, suggestive of certain notes of the blue jay. The
note presently became a crude, broken warble. Even this scalper of the
innocents had music in his soul on such a morning. He saluted the sun
as a robin might have done. After he had finished, he flew away toward
the east.
The shrike is a citizen of the world, being found in both hemispheres.
It does not appear that the European species differs essentially from
our own. In Germany he is called the nine-killer, from the belief that
he kills and sticks upon thorns nine grasshoppers a day.
To make my portrait of the shrike more complete, I will add another
trait of his described by an acute observer who writes me from western
New York. He saw the bird on a bright midwinter morning when the
thermometer stood at zero, and by cautious approaches succeeded in
getting under the apple-tree upon which he was perched. The shrike was
uttering a loud, clear note like _clu-eet, clu-eet, clu-eet,_ and, on
finding he had a listener who was attentive and curious, varied his
performance and kept it up continuously for fifteen minutes. He seemed
to enjoy having a spectator, and never took his eye off him. The
observer approached within twenty feet of him. “As I came near,” he
says, “the shrike began to scold at me, a sharp, buzzing, squeaking
sound not easy to describe. After a little he came out on the end of
the limb nearest me, then he posed himself, and, opening his wings a
little, began to trill and warble under his breath, as it were, with an
occasional squeak, and vibrating his half-open wings in time with his
song.” Some of his notes resembled those of the bluebird, and the whole
performance is described as pleasing and melodious.
This account agrees with Thoreau’s observation, where he speaks of the
shrike “with heedless and unfrozen melody bringing back summer again.”
Sings Thoreau:—
“His steady sails he never furls
At any time o’ year,
And perching now on winter’s curls,
He whistles in his ear.”
But his voice is that of a savage,—strident and disagreeable.
I have often wondered how this bird was kept in check; in the struggle
for existence it would appear to have greatly the advantage of other
birds. It cannot, for instance, be beset with one tenth of the dangers
that threaten the robin, and yet apparently there are a thousand robins
to every shrike. It builds a warm, compact nest in the mountains and
dense woods, and lays six eggs, which would indicate a rapid increase.
The pigeon lays but two eggs, and is preyed upon by both man and beast,
millions of them meeting a murderous death every year; yet always some
part of the country is swarming with untold numbers of them. [Footnote:
This is no longer the case. The passenger pigeon now seems on the verge
of extinction (1895).] But the shrike is one of our rarest birds. I
myself seldom see more than two each year, and before I became an
observer of birds I never saw any.
In size the shrike is a little inferior to the blue jay, with much the
same form. If you see an unknown bird about your orchard or fields in
November or December of a bluish grayish complexion, with dusky wings
and tail that show markings of white, flying rather heavily from point
to point, or alighting down in the stubble occasionally, it is pretty
sure to be the shrike.
V
Nature never tires of repeating and multiplying the same species. She
makes a million bees, a million birds, a million mice or rats, or other
animals, so nearly alike that no eye can tell one from another; but it
is rarely that she issues a small and a large edition, as it were, of
the same species. Yet she has done it in a few cases among the birds
with hardly more difference than a foot-note added or omitted. The
cedar-bird, for instance, is the Bohemian waxwing or chatterer in
smaller type, copied even to the minute, wax-like appendages that
bedeck the ends of the wing-quills. It is about one third smaller, and
a little lighter in color, owing perhaps to the fact that it is
confined to a warmer latitude, its northward range seeming to end about
where that of its larger brother begins. Its flight, its note, its
manners, its general character and habits, are almost identical with
those of its prototype. It is confined exclusively to this continent,
while the chatterer is an Old World bird as well, and ranges the
northern parts of both continents. The latter comes to us from the
hyperborean regions, brought down occasionally by the great cold waves
that originate in those high latitudes. It is a bird of Siberian and
Alaskan evergreens, and passes its life for the most part far beyond
the haunts of man. I have never seen the bird, but small bands of them
make excursions every winter down into our territory from British
America. Audubon, I believe, saw them in Maine; other observers have
seen them in Minnesota. It has the crest of the cedar-bird, the same
yellow border to its tail, but is marked with white on its wings, as if
a snowflake or two had adhered to it from the northern cedars and
pines. If you see about the evergreens in the coldest, snowiest weather
what appear to be a number of very large cherry-birds, observe them
well, for the chances are that visitants from the circumpolar regions
are before your door. It is a sign, also, that the frost legions of the
north are out in great force and carrying all before them.
Our cedar or cherry bird is the most silent bird we have. Our
neutral-tinted birds, like him, as a rule are our finest songsters; but
he has no song or call, uttering only a fine bead-like note on taking
flight. This note is the cedar-berry rendered back in sound. When the
ox-heart cherries, which he has only recently become acquainted with,
have had time to enlarge his pipe and warm his heart, I shall expect
more music from him. But in lieu of music, what a pretty compensation
are those minute, almost artificial-like, plumes of orange and
vermilion that tip the ends of his wing quills! Nature could not give
him these and a song too. She has given the hummingbird a jewel upon
his throat, but no song, save the hum of his wings.
Another bird that is occasionally borne to us on the crest of the cold
waves from the frozen zone, and that is repeated on a smaller scale in
a permanent resident, is the pine grosbeak; his _alter ego,_ reduced in
size, is the purple finch, which abounds in the higher latitudes of the
temperate zone. The color and form of the two birds are again
essentially the same. The females and young males of both species are
of a grayish brown like the sparrow, while in the old males this tint
is imperfectly hidden beneath a coat of carmine, as if the color had
been poured upon their heads, where it is strongest, and so oozed down
and through the rest of the plumage. Their tails are considerably
forked, their beaks cone-shaped and heavy, and their flight undulating.
Those who have heard the grosbeak describe its song as similar to that
of the finch, though no doubt it is louder and stronger. The finch’s
instrument is a fife tuned to love and not to war. He blows a clear,
round note, rapid and intricate, but full of sweetness and melody. His
hardier relative with that larger beak and deeper chest must fill the
woods with sounds. Audubon describes its song as exceedingly rich and
full.
As in the case of the Bohemian waxwing, this bird is also common to
both worlds, being found through Northern Europe and Asia and the
northern parts of this continent. It is the pet of the pine-tree, and
one of its brightest denizens. Its visits to the States are irregular
and somewhat mysterious. A great flight of them occurred in the winter
of 1874-75. They attracted attention all over the country. Several
other flights of them have occurred during the century. When this bird
comes, it is so unacquainted with man that its tameness is delightful
to behold. It thrives remarkably well in captivity, and in a couple of
weeks will become so tame that it will hop down and feed out of its
master’s or mistress’s hand. It comes from far beyond the region of the
apple, yet it takes at once to this fruit, or rather to the seeds,
which it is quick to divine, at its core.
Close akin to these two birds, and standing in the same relation to
each other, are two other birds that come to us from the opposite
zone,—the torrid,—namely, the blue grosbeak and his petit duplicate,
the indigo-bird. The latter is a common summer resident with us,—a bird
of the groves and bushy fields, where his bright song may be heard all
through the long summer day. I hear it in the dry and parched August
when most birds are silent, sometimes delivered on the wing and
sometimes from the perch. Indeed, with me its song is as much a
midsummer sound as is the brassy crescendo of the cicada. The memory of
its note calls to mind the flame-like quiver of the heated atmosphere
and the bright glare of the meridian sun. Its color is much more
intense than that of the common bluebird, as summer skies are deeper
than those of April, but its note is less mellow and tender. Its
original, the blue grosbeak, is an uncertain wanderer from the south,
as the pine grosbeak is from the north. I have never seen it north of
the District of Columbia. It has a loud, vivacious song, of which it is
not stingy, and which is a large and free rendering of the indigo’s,
and belongs to summer more than to spring. The bird is colored the same
as its lesser brother, the males being a deep blue and the females a
modest drab. Its nest is usually placed low down, as is the indigo’s,
and the male carols from the tops of the trees in its vicinity in the
same manner. Indeed, the two birds are strikingly alike in every
respect except in size and in habitat, and, as in each of the other
cases, the lesser bird is, as it were, the point, the continuation, of
the larger, carrying its form and voice forward as the reverberation
carries the sound.
I know the ornithologists, with their hair-splittings, or rather
feather-splittings, point out many differences, but they are
unimportant. The fractions may not agree, but the whole numbers are the
same.
VII
A BED OF BOUGHS
When Aaron came again to camp and tramp with me, or, as he wrote, “to
eat locusts and wild honey with me in the wilderness,” It was past the
middle of August, and the festival of the season neared its close. We
were belated guests, but perhaps all the more eager on that account,
especially as the country was suffering from a terrible drought, and
the only promise of anything fresh or tonic or cool was in primitive
woods and mountain passes.
“Now, my friend,” said I, “we can go to Canada, or to the Maine woods,
or to the Adirondacks, and thus have a whole loaf and a big loaf of
this bread which you know as well as I will have heavy streaks in it,
and will not be uniformly sweet; or we can seek nearer woods, and
content ourselves with one week instead of four, with the prospect of a
keen relish to the last. Four sylvan weeks sound well, but the poetry
is mainly confined to the first one. We can take another slice or two
of the Catskills, can we not, without being sated with kills and
dividing ridges?”
“Anywhere,” replied Aaron, “so that we have a good tramp and plenty of
primitive woods. No doubt we should find good browsing on Peakamoose,
and trout enough in the streams at its base.”
So without further ado we made ready, and in due time found ourselves,
with our packs on our backs, entering upon a pass in the mountains that
led to the valley of the Rondout.
The scenery was wild and desolate in the extreme, the mountains on
either hand looking as if they had been swept by a tornado of stone.
Stone avalanches hung suspended on their sides, or had shot down into
the chasm below. It was a kind of Alpine scenery, where crushed and
broken boulders covered the earth instead of snow.
In the depressions in the mountains the rocky fragments seemed to have
accumulated, and to have formed what might be called stone glaciers
that were creeping slowly down.
Two hours’ march brought us into heavy timber where the stone cataclysm
had not reached, and before long the soft voice of the Rondout was
heard in the gulf below us. We paused at a spring run, and I followed
it a few yards down its mountain stairway, carpeted with black moss,
and had my first glimpse of the unknown stream. I stood upon rocks and
looked many feet down into a still, sunlit pool and saw the trout
disporting themselves in the transparent water, and I was ready to
encamp at once; but my companion, who had not been tempted by the view,
insisted upon holding to our original purpose, which was to go farther
up the stream. We passed a clearing with three or four houses and a
saw-mill. The dam of the latter was filled with such clear water that
it seemed very shallow, and not ten or twelve feet deep, as it really
was. The fish were as conspicuous as if they had been in a pail.
Two miles farther up we suited ourselves and went into camp.
If there ever was a stream cradled in the rocks, detained lovingly by
them, held and fondled in a rocky lap or tossed in rocky arms, that
stream is the Rondout. Its course for several miles from its head is
over the stratified rock, and into this it has worn a channel that
presents most striking and peculiar features. Now it comes silently
along on the top of the rock, spread out and flowing over that thick,
dark green moss that is found only in the coldest streams; then drawn
into a narrow canal only four or five feet wide, through which it
shoots, black and rigid, to be presently caught in a deep basin with
shelving, overhanging rocks, beneath which the phœbe-bird builds in
security, and upon which the fisherman stands and casts his twenty or
thirty feet of line without fear of being thwarted by the brush; then
into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth,
circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages;
or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the
water glides without a ripple.
The surface rock is a coarse sandstone superincumbent upon a
lighter-colored conglomerate that looks like Shawangunk grits, and when
this latter is reached by the water it seems to be rapidly
disintegrated by it, thus forming the deep excavations alluded to.
My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in a mountain stream. The
water was almost as transparent as the air,—was, indeed, like liquid
air; and as it lay in these wells and pits enveloped in shadow, or lit
up by a chance ray of the vertical sun, it was a perpetual feast to the
eye,—so cool, so deep, so pure; every reach and pool like a vast
spring. You lay down and drank or dipped the water up in your cup, and
found it just the right degree of refreshing coldness. One is never
prepared for the clearness of the water in these streams. It is always
a surprise. See them every year for a dozen years, and yet, when you
first come upon one, you will utter an exclamation. I saw nothing like
it in the Adirondacks, nor in Canada. Absolutely without stain or hint
of impurity, it seems to magnify like a lens, so that the bed of the
stream and the fish in it appear deceptively near. It is rare to find
even a trout stream that is not a little “off color,” as they say of
diamonds, but the waters in the section of which I am writing have the
genuine ray; it is the undimmed and untarnished diamond.
If I were a trout, I should ascend every stream till I found the
Rondout. It is the ideal brook. What homes these fish have, what
retreats under the rocks, what paved or flagged courts and areas, what
crystal depths where no net or snare can reach them!—no mud, no
sediment, but here and there in the clefts and seams of the rock
patches of white gravel,—spawning-beds ready-made.
The finishing touch is given by the moss with which the rock is
everywhere carpeted. Even in the narrow grooves or channels where the
water runs the swiftest, the green lining is unbroken. It sweeps down
under the stream and up again on the other side, like some firmly woven
texture. It softens every outline and cushions every stone. At a
certain depth in the great basins and wells it of course ceases, and
only the smooth-swept flagging of the place-rock is visible.
The trees are kept well back from the margin of the stream by the want
of soil, and the large ones unite their branches far above it, thus
forming a high winding gallery, along which the fisherman passes and
makes his long casts with scarcely an interruption from branch or twig.
In a few places he makes no cast, but sees from his rocky perch the
water twenty feet below him, and drops his hook into it as into a well.
We made camp at a bend in the creek where there was a large surface of
mossy rock uncovered by the shrunken stream,—a clean, free space left
for us in the wilderness that was faultless as a kitchen and
dining-room, and a marvel of beauty as a lounging-room, or an open
court, or what you will. An obsolete wood or bark road conducted us to
it, and disappeared up the hill in the woods beyond. A loose boulder
lay in the middle, and on the edge next the stream were three or four
large natural wash-basins scooped out of the rock, and ever filled
ready for use. Our lair we carved out of the thick brush under a large
birch on the bank. Here we planted our flag of smoke and feathered our
nest with balsam and hemlock boughs and ferns, and laughed at your four
walls and pillows of down.
[Illustration: yellow birches]
Wherever one encamps in the woods, there is home, and every object and
feature about the place take on a new interest and assume a near and
friendly relation to one. We were at the head of the best fishing.
There was an old bark-clearing not far off which afforded us a daily
dessert of most delicious blackberries,—an important item in the
woods,—and then all the features of the place—a sort of cave above
ground—were of the right kind.
There was not a mosquito, or gnat, or other pest in the woods, the cool
nights having already cut them off. The trout were sufficiently
abundant, and afforded us a few hours’ sport daily to supply our wants.
The only drawback was, that they were out of season, and only palatable
to a woodman’s keen appetite. What is this about trout spawning in
October and November, and in some cases not till March? These trout had
all spawned in August, every one of them. The coldness and purity of
the water evidently made them that much earlier. The game laws of the
State protect the fish after September 1, proceeding upon the theory
that its spawning season is later than that,—as it is in many cases,
but not in all, as we found out.
The fish are small in these streams, seldom weighing over a few ounces.
Occasionally a large one is seen of a pound or pound and a half weight.
I remember one such, as black as night, that ran under a black rock.
But I remember much more distinctly a still larger one that I caught
and lost one eventful day.
I had him on my hook ten minutes, and actually got my thumb in his
mouth, and yet he escaped.
It was only the over-eagerness of the sportsman. I imagined I could
hold him by the teeth.
The place where I struck him was a deep well-hole, and I was perched
upon a log that spanned it ten or twelve feet above the water. The
situation was all the more interesting because I saw no possible way to
land my fish. I could not lead him ashore, and my frail tackle could
not be trusted to lift him sheer from that pit to my precarious perch.
What should I do? call for help? but no help was near. I had a revolver
in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that
novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was too late. I would
have taken a Sam Patch leap into the water, and have wrestled with my
antagonist in his own element, but I knew the slack, thus sure to
occur, would probably free him; so I peered down upon the beautiful
creature and enjoyed my triumph as far as it went. He was caught very
lightly through his upper jaw, and I expected every struggle and
somersault would break the hold. Presently I saw a place in the rocks
where I thought it possible, with such an incentive, to get down within
reach of the water: by careful manœuvring I slipped my pole behind me
and got hold of the line, which I cut and wound around my finger; then
I made my way toward the end of the log and the place in the rocks,
leading my fish along much exhausted on the top of the water. By an
effort worthy the occasion I got down within reach of the fish, and, as
I have already confessed, thrust my thumb into his mouth and pinched
his cheek; he made a spring and was free from my hand and the hook at
the same time; for a moment he lay panting on the top of the water,
then, recovering himself slowly, made his way down through the clear,
cruel element beyond all hope of recapture. My blind impulse to follow
and try to seize him was very strong, but I kept my hold and peered and
peered long after the fish was lost to view, then looked my
mortification in the face and laughed a bitter laugh.
“But, hang it! I had all the fun of catching the fish, and only miss
the pleasure of eating him, which at this time would not be great.”
“The fun, I take it,” said my soldier, “is in triumphing, and not in
being beaten at the last.”
“Well, have it so; but I would not exchange those ten or fifteen
minutes with that trout for the tame two hours you have spent in
catching that string of thirty. To see a big fish after days of small
fry is an event; to have a jump from one is a glimpse of the
sportsman’s paradise; and to hook one, and actually have him under your
control for ten minutes,—why, that is paradise itself as long as it
lasts.”
One day I went down to the house of a settler a mill below, and engaged
the good dame to make us a couple of loaves of bread, and in the
evening we went down after them. How elastic and exhilarating the walk
was through the cool, transparent shadows! The sun was gilding the
mountains, and its yellow light seemed to be reflected through all the
woods. At one point we looked through and along a valley of deep shadow
upon a broad sweep of mountain quite near and densely clothed with
woods, flooded from base to summit by the setting sun. It was a wild,
memorable scene. What power and effectiveness in Nature, I thought, and
how rarely an artist catches her touch! Looking down upon or squarely
into a mountain covered with a heavy growth of birch and maple, and
shone upon by the sun, is a sight peculiarly agreeable to me. How
closely the swelling umbrageous heads of the trees fit together, and
how the eye revels in the flowing and easy uniformity, while the mind
feels the ruggedness and terrible power beneath!
As we came back, the light yet lingered on the top of Slide Mountain.
“‘The last that parleys with the setting sun,’”
said I, quoting Wordsworth.
“That line is almost Shakespearean,” said my companion. “It suggests
that great hand at least, though it has not the grit and virility of
the more primitive bard. What triumph and fresh morning power in
Shakespeare’s lines that will occur to us at sunrise to-morrow!—
“‘And jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.”