The longest days in the year have now come..

June 18. 

The hornet's nest is built with many thin layers of his paper, with an interval of about an eighth of an inch between them, so that his wall is one or two inches thick. This probably for warmth, dryness, and lightness. So sometimes the carpenter has learned to build double walls. 

When I attended to the lichens last winter, I made out: — First [listing species]

7 p. m. — To Cliffs. No moon. 

Methinks I saw and heard goldfinches. 

Pyrola, Mt. Pritchard

June 21, 2023

Pyrolas are beginning to blossom. 

The four-leaved loosestrife. 

The longest days in the year have now come. The sun goes down now (this moment) behind Watatic, from the Cliffs.

St. John's-wort is beginning to blossom; looks yellow.

I hear a man playing a clarionet far off. Apollo tending the flocks of King Admetus. How cultivated, how sweet and glorious, is music ! Men have brought this art to great perfection, the art of modulating sound, by long practice since the world began. What superiority over the rude harmony of savages ! There is something glorious and flower-like in it. What a contrast this evening melody with the occupations of the day! It is perhaps the most admirable accomplishment of man.

H. D. Journal, Journal, June 18, 1852

I hear a man playing a clarionet far off. See June 16, 1852 ("A flute from some villager. How rare among men so fit a thing as the sound of a flute at evening!"); June 25, 1852 (“Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour. ");  August 3, 1852 (" I hear the sound of a distant piano. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe")

June18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2020

A sultry night.

June 16.

Down railroad. 

Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. 

A flute from some villager. How rare among men so  fit a thing as the sound of a flute at evening! 

The sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening. Ever and anon the sound of his trombone comes over the meadows and fields, a-lulling all Concord to sleep. 

Have not the fireflies in the meadow relation to the stars above etincelant? When the darkness comes, we see stars beneath also.  Do not the stars, too, show their light for love, like the fireflies?

There are northern lights, shooting high up withal.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1852

Have not the fireflies in the meadow relation to the stars? See August 2, 1854 (“Shooting stars are but fireflies of the firmament.”)

A flute from some villager. How rare among men so fit a thing as the sound of a flute at evening! See  June 18, 1852 ("I hear a man playing a clarionet far off.  . . .  There is something glorious and flower-like in it. What a contrast this evening melody with the occupations of the day! It is perhaps the most admirable accomplishment of man."); June 25, 1852 (“Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour. Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! . . . He plays some well-known march. But the music is not in the tune; it is in the sound.”);   August 3, 1852  ("I hear the sound of a distant piano. . . .  By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe ...")