Digital heart book

Perhaps at midnight one was awakened by
a cricket shrilly singing on his shoulder, or by a hunting spider
in his eye, and was lulled asleep again by some streamlet purling
its way along at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine in our
neighborhood. It was pleasant to lie with our heads so low in
the grass, and hear what a tinkling ever-busy laboratory it was.
A thousand little artisans beat on their anvils all night long.
Far in the night as we were falling asleep on the bank of the
Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in
preparation for a country muster, as we learned, and we thought
of the line,--
"When the drum beat at dead of night."
We could have assured him that his beat 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 in the silence and
the dark. This stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our
ears from time to time, far, sweet, and significant, and we
listened with such an unprejudiced sense as if for the first time
we heard at all.


Pages:
242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266