These 'bird's-nests,' brown and weather-beaten, endured far into the winter.

The brook-sparrows still sang as I passed by again in the evening; they seem the most unwearied of birds, for you may hear them all day, all the evening, and at one o'clock next morning; indeed, at intervals, all night.

By night the note is, or appears to be, less sparrow-like, or perhaps the silence of night improves it to the ear.

I stayed that evening in a corner of a wheatfield not yet yellow, and watched the shadows of the trees grow longer and broader as the sun declined.
As the breeze rushed over the corn there was a play of various shades of green, the stalks as they bent this and that way taking different hues.

But under the hedge it was still; the wind could not come through, though it moved the boughs above.