The song was
continuous--a soft melodious warble, full of sweetness and suggestion;
but suggestion of June meadows and a summer sunrise, rather than of
snow-packed evergreens and Christmastide. To add to the unreality, no
ear could tell where the song came from; its own muffled quality
disguised the source perfectly. I searched the trees in front; there
was no bird there. I looked behind; there was no place for a bird to
sing. I remembered the redstart, how he calls sometimes from among the
rocks, and refuses to show himself, and runs and hides when you look
for him. I searched the wall; but not a bird track marked the snow.
All the while the wonderful carol went on, now in the air, now close
beside me, growing more and more bewildering as I listened. It took me
a good half-hour to locate the sound; then I understood.
Near me was a solitary fir tree with a bushy top. The bird, whoever he
was, had gone to sleep up there, close against the trunk, as birds do,
for protection. During the night the soft snow gathered thicker and
thicker upon the flexible branches. Their tips bent with the weight
till they touched the trunk below, forming a green bower, about which
the snow packed all night long, till it was completely closed in. The
bird was a prisoner inside, and singing as the morning sun shone in
through the walls of his prison-house.
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