And as the happy party--grouped upon the grassy knoll, like some party
of shepherds and shepherdesses, in the old days of Arcady--gazed on
the beautiful spectacle, the voices of the negroes coming from their
work were heard, driving their slow teams in, and sending on the air
the clear melodious songs, which, rude and ludicrous as they seem,
have yet so marvellous an effect, borne on the airs of night.
Those evening songs and sounds! Not long ago, one says, I stood, just
at sunset, on the summit of a pretty knoll, and, looking eastward, saw
the harvesters cutting into the tall, brown-headed, rippling wheat.
I heard the merry whistle of the whirling scythes; I heard their
songs--they were so sweet! And why are these harvest melodies so
soft-sounding, and so grateful to the ear? Simply because they
discourse of the long buried past; and, like some magical spell,
arouse from its sleep all the beauteous and gay splendor of those
hours. As the clear, measured sound floated to my ear, I heard also,
again, the vanished music of happy childhood--that elysian time which
cannot last for any of us.
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