A record of a sunset. At midnight by moonlight.

June 28.

OEnothera biennis, evening-primrose, with its conspicuous flowers but rather unsightly stem and leaves. 

The Rubus odorata, purple flowering raspberry, in gardens. 

Potatoes for some time. 

Evening. 7 p.m. — Moon more than half. 

There are meteorologists, but who keeps a record of the fairer sunsets? 

While men are recording the direction of the wind, they neglect to record the beauty of the sunset or the rainbow. 

The sun not yet set. 

The bobolink sings descending to the meadow as I go along the railroad to the pond. 

The seringo-bird and the common song sparrow, — and the swallows twitter. 

The plaintive strain of the lark, coming up from the meadow, is perfectly adapted to the hour. 

When I get nearer the wood, the veery is heard, and the oven-bird, or whet-saw, sounds hollowly from within the recesses of the wood. 

The clouds in the west are edged with fiery red. A few robins faintly sing. 

The huckleberry-bird in more open fields in the woods. The thrasher?

The sun is down. 

The night-hawks are squeaking in the somewhat dusky air and occasionally making the ripping sound; the chewinks sound; the bullfrogs begin, and the toads; also tree-toads more numerously. 

Walden imparts to the body of the bather a remark ably chalky-white appearance, whiter than natural, tinged with blue, which, combined with its magnifying and distorting influence, produces a monstrous and ogre like effect, proving, nevertheless, the purity of the water. 

The river water, on the other hand, imparts to the bather a yellowish tinge.

There is a very low mist on the water close to the shore, a few inches high. 

The moon is brassy or golden now, and the air more dusky; yet I hear the pea-wai and the wood thrush, and now a whip-poor-will before I have seen a star. 

The walker in the woods at this hour takes note of the different veins of air through which he passes, — the fresher and cooler in the hollows, laden with the condensed fragrance of plants, as it were distilled in dews; and yet the warmer veins in a cool evening like this do not fail to be agreeable, though in them the air is comparatively lifeless or exhausted of its vitality. It circulates about from pillar to post, from wood-side to side-hill, like a dog that has lost its master, now the sun is gone. 

Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before.

Yet I hear a chewink, veery, and wood thrush. 

Nighthawks and whip-poor-wills, of course. 

A whip-poor-will whose nest, perchance, I am near, on the side of the Cliff, hovers in the dusky air about ten feet from me, now on this side, then on that, on quivering wings, inspecting me, showing the white on its wings. It holds itself stationary for a minute. 

It is the first warm night for a week, and I hear the toads by the river very numerous. 

First there was sundown, then starlight. 

Starlight! That would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise. 

That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in. 

Is not the moon a mediator? 

She is a light-giver that does not dazzle me. 

I have camped out all night on the tops of four mountains, — Wachusett, Saddle-back, Ktaadn, and Monadnock, — and I usually took a ramble over the summit at midnight by moonlight. 

I remember the moaning of the wind on the rocks, and that you seemed much nearer to the moon than on the plains. The light is then in harmony with the scenery. Of what use the sunlight to the mountain-summits? From the cliffs you looked off into vast depths of illumined air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 28, 1852


When I get nearer the wood, the veery is heard, and the oven-bird, or whet-saw, sounds hollowly from within the recesses of the wood. ...  Now it is starlight [y]et I hear a chewink, veery, and wood thrush. See May 13, 1856 (“At the swamp, hear the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush; the tweezer-bird or Sylvia Americana. Also the oven-bird sings.”); May 19, 1860 (“By the path-side near there, what I should call a veery's nest with four light-blue eggs, but I have not heard the veery note this year, only the yorrick.“); June 11, 1852 ("The oven-bird and the thrasher sing. "); June 15, 1854 ("Thrasher and catbird sing still; summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat sing still; and oven-bird and veery"); June 16, 1856 (“Heard . . . not only Wilson’s thrush, but evergreen forest note and tanager.”); June 21, 1852 (“I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird.”);  July 10, 1854 ("The singing birds at present are . . .  Red-eye, tanager, wood thrush, chewink, veery, oven-bird, — all even at midday.")

Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before. . . .Starlight! That would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise. See  August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”); May 8, 1852 (“Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, i. e. when the first star can be seen. ”); June 30, 1852 (“It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear”); July 20, 1852 ("It is starlight. You see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier you might have seen it had you looked.");