Henry David Thoreau On Birds (excerpts From Walden) Screech

henry david thoreau on birds (excerpts from walden). screech owl when other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like

Henry David Thoreau on Birds
(excerpts from Walden).
Screech Owl
When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like
mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben
Jonsonian. Wise midnight bags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-
who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty,
the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and
the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to
hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the
woodside; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it
were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that
would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and
melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape
night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating
their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of
their transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and
capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that
I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and
circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray
oaks. Then- that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the
farther side with tremulous sincerity, and- bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly
from far in the Lincoln woods.
This quote found on:
http://birding.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.math.sunysb.edu/%7Etony/birds/owls.html