hat I find amid these
rugged, savage aspects of nature creatures so fairy and delicate.
But such is the law. Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with
the ruggedest and the savagest you will find likewise the fairest
and the most delicate. The greatness and the minuteness of nature
pass all understanding.

Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser
songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has
reached my ears from out the depths of the forest that to me is the
finest sound in nature,--the song of the hermit thrush. I often hear
him thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away,
when only the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me;
and through the general chorus of wrens and warblers I detect this
sound rising pure and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height
were slowly chanting a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to
the sentiment of the beautiful in me, and suggests a serene
religious beatitude as no other sound in nature does. It is perhaps
more of an evening than a morning hymn, though I hear it at all
hours of the day. It is very simple, and I can hardly tell the
secret of its charm. "O spheral, spheral!" he seems to say; "O holy,
holy! O clear away, clear away! O clear up, clear up!" interspersed
with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes. It is not a
proud, gorgeous strain, like the tanager's or the grosbeak's;
suggests no passion or emotion,--nothing personal,--but seems to be
the voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best
moments. It realizes a peace and a deep, solemn joy that only the
finest souls may know. A few nights ago I ascended a mountain to see
the world by moonlight, and when near the summit the hermit
commenced his evening hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this
strain on the lone mountain, with the full moon just rounded from
the horizon, the pomp of your cities and the pride of your
civilization seemed trivial and cheap.

I have seldom known two of these birds to be singing at the same
time in the same locality, rivaling each other, like the wood thrush
or the veery. Shooting one from a tree, I have observed another take
up the strain from almost the identical perch in less than ten
minutes afterward. Later in the day, when I had penetrated the heart
of the old Barkpeeling, I came suddenly upon one singing from a low
stump, and for a wonder he did not seem alarmed, but li