To my soul its spoken "Hush!" was
audible, and again, and yet again, it said "Hush!" until the tumult in
me was still, and I could not think my own thoughts. I could thereafter
only listen, breathless, straining my senses to catch some natural
sound, however faint. Far away in the dim distance, in some blue
pasture, a cow was lowing, and the recurring sound passed me like the
humming flight of an insect, then fainter still, like an imagined sound,
until it ceased. A withered leaf fell from the tree-top; I heard it
fluttering downwards, touching other leaves in its fall until the silent
grass received it. Then, as I listened for another leaf, suddenly from
overhead came the brief gushing melody of some late singer, a robin-like
sound, ringing out clear and distinct as a flourish on a clarionet:
brilliant, joyous, and unexpected, yet in keeping with that melancholy
quiet, affecting the mind like a spray of gold and scarlet embroidery on
a pale, neutral ground. The sun went down, and in setting, kindled the
boles of the old trees here and there into pillars of red fire, while
others in deeper shade looked by contrast like pillars of ebony; and
wherever the foliage was thinnest, the level rays shining through
imparted to the sere leaves a translucence and splendor that was like
the stained glass in the windows of some darkening cathedral.
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