Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/199

 heavens. Once the stars lose some of their sparkle and a deep blue mist skirts the eastern horizon, a lurid and brazen light foretells the approaching day. You hear the sound of woodchopping at the farmer's door—the baying of the housedog and the distant clarion of cocks. The frosty air seems to convey only, and with new distinctness, the finer particles of sound to our ears. It comes clear and round like a bell, as if there were fewer impediments than in the green atmosphere of summer, to make it faint and ragged. And beside, all Nature is tight drawn and sonorous like seasoned wood. Sounds now come to our ears from a greater distance in the horizon than in the summer. For then Nature is never silent, and the chirp of crickets is incessant, but now the farthest and faintest sound takes possession of the vacuum. Even the barking of dogs and lowing of cattle is melodious. The jingling of the ice on the trees is meet and liquid. I have heard a sweeter music in some lone dale, where flowed a rill released by the noonday sun from its own frosty fetters—while the icicles were melting upon the [143]