It would come by-and-by to be a hard task
for the stone and lime victim to hold its place, with its sinews of run
mortar, against these tyrants of the wood. And then they were as full of
noises as Babel itself--noises a thousand times more
heterogeneous--croaking, chirping, screeching, cawing, whistling,
billing, cooing, cuckooing. "What a place to live in!" I thought, fresh
as I was from town, "where, if there are noises, one knows something of
their meaning--maledictory, yea, devilish as it often is, expressive of
the passions of men which will never sleep. But these! what could one
make of such a _tintamarre_? Nothing but the reflection--that is, if you
happen to be a philosopher, which, thank God, I am not--that not one
note of all this rural oratorio is without its intention; and thus we
always satisfy ourselves. But when we run the matter up a little
further, we find it a very small affair: two responses, one to each of
two chords vibrating for ever and ever throughout all nature--pleasure
and pain, pain and pleasure, turn by turn--the last pain being death!"
"How can you live here, Graeme?" I said, as we stood under the old
porch, looking out, or rather having our look blocked up by the
thickness, and our ears deaved by the eternal screeching and cawing of
five thousand crows overhead.
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