July 16.
Set out at 3 P.M. for Nine-Acre Corner Bridge via Hubbard's Bridge and Conantum, returning via Dashing Brook, rear of Baker's, and railroad at 6.30 P.M.
The song sparrow, the most familiar and New England bird, sets this midsummer day to music, as if it were the music of a mossy rail or fence post; a little stream of song, cooling, rippling through the noon.
Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them. The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch.
I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored.
The earliest corn begins to tassel out. The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound, but the cricket is heard under all sounds.
The twittering of swallows is in the air, reminding me of water. The meadow-sweet is now in bloom, and the yarrow prevails by all roadsides. I see the hardback too, homely but dear plant, just opening its red clustered flowers.
The small aster, too, now abounds (Aster miser), and the tall buttercup still.
The tree-primrose, or scabish, still is seen over the fence.
The red-wings and crow blackbirds are heard chattering on the trees.
St.John's-wort, one of the first of yellow flowers, begins to shine along the roadside.
I hear the kingbird twittering or chattering like a stout-chested swallow.
The prunella sends back a blue ray from under my feet as I walk; the pale lobelia too.
The plaintive, spring-restoring 'peep of a bluebird is occasionally heard.
The wild rose peeps from amid the alders and other shrubs by the roadside.
The elder-blow fills the air with its scent.
The angelica,with its large umbels, is gone to seed. On it I find one of those slow-moving green worms, with rings spotted black and yellow.
The whiteweed is turning black .
Grapes are half grown and lead the mind forward to autumn.
It is an air this afternoon that makes you indifferent to all things, - perfect summer, but with a comfortable breeziness. Notwithstanding the drifting clouds, you fear no rain to-day. You know not heat nor cold. What season of the year is this?
The yellow lilies reign in the river. The painted tortoises drop off the willow stumps as you go over the bridge. The river is now so low that you can see its bottom, shined on by the sun, and travellers stop to look at fishes as they go over, leaning on the rails. The pickerel-weed sends up its heavenly blue. The devil's-needles seem to rest in air over the water. The tansy is budded.
The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red! When were they painted? How carelessly the eye rests on them, or passes them by as things of course!
Now, at 4 P. M., I hear the pewee in the woods, and the cuckoo reminds me of some silence among the birds I had not noticed. The vireo sings like a robin at even, incessantly, - for I have now turned into Conant's woods.
The oven-bird helps fill some pauses. The poison sumach shows its green berries, now unconscious of guilt. The heart-leaved loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) is seen in low open woods. The breeze displays the white under sides of the oak leaves and gives a fresh and flowing look to the woods.
The river is a dark-blue winding stripe amid the green of the meadow. What is the color of the world? Green mixed with yellowish and reddish for hills and ripe grass, and darker green for trees and forests; blue spotted with dark and white for sky and clouds, and dark blue for water.
I am refreshed by the view of Nobscot and the southwestern vales, from Conantum, seething with the blue element. I walk through these elevated fields, terraced upon the side of the hill so that my eye looks off into the blue cauldron of the air at his own level.
Methinks this is the first of dog-days. The air in the distance has a peculiar blue mistiness, or furnace-like look, though it is not sultry yet.
It is a world of orchards and small-fruits now, and you can stay at home if the well has cool water in it. Here the haymakers have just gone to tea, - at 5 o'clock, the farmer's hour, before the afternoon is ended, while he still thinks much work may still be done before night.
At the Corner Bridge the white lilies are budded. Green apples are now so large as to remind me of coddling and the autumn again. The season of fruits is arrived.
I come through the pine plains behind James Baker's, where late was open pasture, now open pitch pine woods; only here and there the grass has given place to a carpet of pine-needles. These are among our pleasantest woods, - open, level, with blackberry vines interspersed and flowers, as lady's- slippers, earlier, and pinks on the outskirts.
And now I hear the wood thrush from the shade, who loves these pine woods as well as I.
I pass by Walden's scalloped shore. The epilobium reflects a pink gleam up the vales and down the hills. The chewink jingles on a bush's top.
Still the cars come and go with the regularity of nature, of the sun and moon.
***
What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure to be becoming pure?
It is almost desirable to be impure that we may be the subject of this improvement.
That I am innocent to myself!
That I love and reverence my life!
That I am better fitted for a lofty society to-day than I was yesterday!
To make my life a sacrament! What is nature without this lofty tumbling?
May I treat myself with more and more respect and tenderness.
May I not forget that I am impure and vicious.
May I not cease to love purity.
May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day.
May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher than I actually enjoy.
May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly discovered self.
Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still.
May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object.
What temple, what fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own being? The possibility of my own improvement, that is to be cherished.
As I regard myself, so I am.
O my dear friends, I have not forgotten you.
I will know you to-morrow.
I associate you with my ideal self.
I had ceased to have faith in myself.
I thought I was grown up and become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me.
In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in the beginning spring and vernal season of life.
It is the love of virtue makes us young ever.
That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after the perfect.
I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world.
The lecturer suggested to me that I might become better than I am.
Was it not a good lecture, then?
May I dream not that I shunned vice; may I dream that I loved and practiced virtue.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 16, 1851
I might have added to the list of July 16th the Aralia hispida, bristling aralia; the heart-leaved loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) also the upright loosestrife (L. racemosa), with a rounded terminal raceme; the tufted vetch (Vicia cracca). Sweet-gale fruit now green. H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1851
The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red! See
July 5, 1853 ("Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving forward while feeding that, in surveying on the Great Fields to-day, I was interrupted by a herd of a dozen cows, which successively passed before my line of vision, feeding forward, and I had to watch my opportunity to look between them.")
The prunella sends back a blue ray from under my feet as I walk. See July 2, 1852 ("The prunella has various tints in various lights, now blue, now lilac. As the twilight deepens into night, its color changes. It always suggests freshness and coolness, from the places where it grows"); July 17, 1852 ("At evening the prunellas in the grass like the sky glow purple, which were blue all day.")
The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound. See
June 30, 1851 (“ The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening.”)
And now I hear the wood thrush from the shade, who loves these pine woods as well as I. See
May 28, 1855 ("While we sit by the path in the depths of the woods three quarters of a mile beyond Hayden’s,. . ., the wood thrush sings steadily for half an hour, now at 2.30 P. M., amid the pines, — loud and clear and sweet.");
June 15, 1851 ("I sit in the shade of the pines to hear a wood thrush at noon. The bird begins on a low strain, i. e. it first delivers a strain on a lower key, then a moment after another a little higher, then another still varied from the others, — no two successive strains alike, either ascending or descending.")
I love and worship
myself with love which absorbs
my love for the world.
Self-heal (prunella)
sends a blue ray from under
my feet as I walk.
And now from the shade
I hear the wood thrush who loves
these woods as well as I.
