Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/273

worship, making the welkin ring with praise of the pure joy of life, a chorus that quivered into silence only with the passing of the rose of mystery from the very tip of the high horn of Chocorua. Nor did the silence last long. Before the last wood thrush had finished his "Good night; all's well; God is good," other songs of praise and the joy of life were echoing from swamp and wood and lake margin. Where the birds had ceased a myriad other voices took up new refrains. The dreamy trill of the tree frogs sounds from the perfumed dusk, a lullaby of the world primeval that sang the first man to sleep in some safe refuge in the deep woods. From the distant marsh the mingled voices of innumerable hylas ring a chorus of fairy sleighbells that rises and falls as the wind of evening drifts by. Nowhere in the world, I believe, can one hear such hyla choruses as he gets in May evenings from marshy pools among the New Hampshire hills. Coming from a distance the hypnotic insistence of the sound has a soothing, sleepy quality that lulls to rest. To seek its source and stand by the very border of the pool is to find it a frightful up-