Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/75

 the forest of undreamed-of exploits, and the whole genii of untamed and winged thoughts.

I shall not soon forget the sounds which we heard as we were falling asleep this night, on the banks of the Merrimac. Far into the night we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in preparation for a country muster in Candia, as we learned, and we thought of the line,—

When the drum beat at dead of night.

The very firmament echoed his beat, and we could have answered him that it would be answered, and the forces be mustered. Fear not, thou drummer of the night, we too will be there! And still he drummed on alone in the silence and the dark. This stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears from time to time to remind us of those fabulous Arabian notes we had almost forgotten. It was as if our shoulders jogged the stars.

Occasionally we hear a remote sound from a distant sphere, with so unprejudiced a sense for the sweet and significant, that we seem for the first time to have heard at all; and [27]