Francois Boucher Adoration of the Shepherds painting

Francois Boucher Adoration of the Shepherds paintingJohannes Vermeer The Concert paintingGustave Courbet The Origin of the World painting
along the hollow street, the lackadaisical rhythms of the weariest of clog dancers, and endless in circles, narrow iron tires grinced continuously after. Along the sidewalks, with incisive heels and leathery shuffle, young men and women advanced, retreated.
A rocking chair betrayed reiterant strain, as of a defective lung; like a single note from a stupendous jew’s-harp, the chain of a porch swing twanged.
Somewhere very near, intimate to some damp inch of the grass between these, a cricket peeped, and was answered as if by his echo.
Humbled beneath the triumphant cries of children, which tore the whole darkness like streams of fire, the voices of men and women on their porches rubbed cheerfully against each other, and in the room next his own, like the laboring upward of laden windlasses and the mildest pouring out of fresh water, he heard the voices of men and women who were familiar to him. They groaned, rewarded; lifted, and spilled out: and watching the windows, listening at the heart of the proud bell of darkness, he lay in perfect peace.