in Thoreau’s Journal:

4 AM.  The first really foggy morning yet before I rise I hear the song of the birds from out it––like the bursting of its bubbles with music–the head on liquids just uncorked. The song gilds thus the frost work of the morning–  As if the fog were a great sweet froth on the surface of land and water–whose fixed air escaped–whose bubbles burst with music.  The sound of its evaporation–the fixed air of the morning just brought from the cellars of the night escaping.–  The morning twittering of birds in perfect harmony with it. I came near awaking this morning. I am older than last year     the mornings are further between–  The days are fewer­–  Any excess is fatal to the morning’s clarity­­–– but in health the sound of a cow bell is celestial music. O might I always wake to thought & poetry––regenerated.

July 7, 1851 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours, you can hear the sound of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard.