Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/265

Rh wing again, whistling as he goes. He flies straight from me,—for this time, by good luck, I see him as he starts,—and mounts and mounts. Then, far, far up, he whistles, zip, zip, and then, when he can stay no longer, comes down in crazy zigzags.

A wonderful display. If a man could be as truly enraptured as the woodcock seems to be, he would know the joys of the blest. I wonder how many thousand Aprils this cumbrous-looking, gross-looking, unpoetical-looking bird has been disporting himself thus at heaven's gate. There must be a real soul in a creature, no matter what his appearance, who is capable of such transports and ravishments, such marvelous upliftings, such mad reaches after the infinite.

I listen and wonder, and then come away, meditating on what I have seen and heard. The last of the small birds have fallen silent. Only a few hylas are peeping as I pass a cranberry meadow. Then, halfway home, as the road traverses a piece of woods, with a brook singing on one side, and the moon peeping through fleecy clouds, suddenly I halt. That was a screech owl's