Saturday, May 26, 2012

The pewee and the cricket.

May 26

Surveying the Brooks farm. 

The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms. 

The meadow smells sweet as you go along low places in the road at sundown. 

I hear the pea-wai, the tender note. Is it not the small pewee? 

To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer.  

Walking home from surveying, the fields are just beginning to be reddened with sorrel.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1852


To-night I hear many crickets. . . .See May 24, 1857 ("Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.") See also April 14, 1852; May 22, 1854



I hear the pea-wai, the tender note. See   May 26, 1857 ("Wood pewee.")  See also April 14, 1852 (" I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note?"); May 17. 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on."); May 17, 1854 ("Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound. "); May 19, 1856 ("Wood pewee. ");  May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent");  May 23, 1854 ("The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day (2 p. m.), sitting on a low limb near me, pe-a-wee, pe-a-wee, etc., five or six times at short and regular intervals, looking about all the while, and then, naively, pee-a-oo, emphasizing the first syllable, and begins again. . . ."); May 25, 1855 ("Wood pewee. ");     May 24, 1859 ("Hear the wood pewee.");  May 24, 1860 ("Hear a wood pewee.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

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