The pulse of the River.

August 2

P. M. — To Hill. 

A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water. This antediluvian bird, creature of the night, is a fit emblem of a dead stream like this Musketicook. 

This especially is the bird of the river. There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream, — its slowly lapsing flight, even like the rills of Musketicook and my own pulse sometimes.  

August 2, 2021

August 2, 2026

Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts. 

Acalypha, apparently not long. 

Dodder, not long (not out 27th of July at railroad bridge), say four or five days. 

A three-ribbed goldenrod by small apple, by wall at foot east side of Hill (S. gigantea ? or one of the two preceding), not nearly out. It differs from my gigantea apparently only in the leaves being perfectly smooth above and the stem smooth and pink (?) glaucous (excepting a little pubescence near the top). Very tall. Vide it by and by. 

The lower leaves of some catnep are now of that delicate lake or claret color. 

Some waxwork leaves have felt the heat and slight drought. Their green is spotted with yellow, distinct yellow and green; others a very delicate clear yellow; others faded quite white.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1856

A green bittern comes noiselessly flapping. See July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . . with heavy flapping flight"); July 31, 1859 ("The small green bitterns are especially numerous."); August 1, 1858 ("So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Green Bittern

Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts. See August 1, 1859 ("The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low."); ); August 9, 1856 ("All the Bidens Beckii is drowned too, and will be delayed, if not exterminated for this year."); August 11, 1853 ("The weeds still covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii."); August 12, 1854 ("The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii

A three-ribbed goldenrod . . . differs from my gigantea. See July 31, 1856  ("The Solidago gigantea (?), three-ribbed, out a long time at Walden shore by railroad, more perfectly out than any solidago I have seen. I will call this S. gigantea, yet it has a yellowish-green stem, slightly pubescent above, and leaves slightly rough to touch above, rays small, about fifteen"); August 16, 1858 ("A three-ribbed goldenrod on railroad causeway, two to three feet high, abundantly out"); August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last)")

Waxwork leaves have felt the heat. See August 9, 1854 (""Walden" published. Elder-berries. 

Waxwork yellowing.")

August 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 2

A green bittern comes

noiselessly flapping – sluggish

pulse of the river.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The pulse of the River

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 ©  2009-2026

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