Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/183

 which is their own element, of which man cannot be aware. The occasional and transient notes of such birds as migrate early, heard in midsummer or later, are among the earliest indications of the advancing year, plaintively recalling the spring. The clear whistle of the oriole is occasionally heard among the elms at this time, as if striving to reawaken the love season, or, as if, in the long interval since the spring it had but paused a moment to secure its prey. It harmonizes with the aftermath springing under our feet. The faint, flitting note of the goldfinch marks the turning point of the year, and is heard in the gardens by the middle of August, as if this little harbinger of the Fall were prompting Nature to make haste. Its lisping, peeping note, so incessant and universal that it is hardly distinguished, more than the creak of the crickets, is one of Nature's ground-tones, and is associated with the rustling of the leaves and the swift lapse of time. The lark too sometimes sings again down in the meadow, as in the spring, and the robin peeps, and the bluebirds, old and young, revisit their boxes and hollow [131]