Friday, June 1, 2012

Moonlit clouds

June 1.

Evening. -To the Lee place, the moon about full.

The sounds I hear by the bridge: the midsummer frog (I think it is not the toad), the nighthawk, crickets, the peetweet (it is early), the hum of dor-bugs, and the whip-poor-will.

The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights, and never-failing entertainment of nightly travellers. You can never foretell the fate of the moon, -- whether she will prevail over or be obscured by the clouds half an hour hence. The traveller's sympathy with the moon makes the drama of the shifting clouds interesting. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1852

The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights. See August 12, 1851 ("The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate what cloud will obscure the moon and what she will triumph over.")

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