July 23.
July 23, 2015
As the light in the west fades, the sky there,
seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.
P. M. – To Annursnack.
Herbage is drying up; even weeds are wilted, and the corn rolls.
Agriculture is a good school in which to drill a man. Successful farming admits of no idling.
Now is the haying season.
How active must these men be, all the country over, that they may get through their work in season! A few spoiled windrows, all black and musty, have taught them that they must make hay while the sun shines, and get it in before it rains.
Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road.
Pycnanthemum muticum, mountain mint. Have I not mistaken this for the other species heretofore?
The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now, long before the rum cherry.
Also the Pyrus arbutifolia.
Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. [Cirsium pumilum.]
Chenopodium hybridum, maple-leaved goose-foot.
What is that white hairy plant with lanceolate leaves and racemes now, with flat burs, one to three, and a long spine in the midst, and five ovate calyx-leaves left (these turned to one side of the peduncle), burs very adhesive, close to road in meadow just beyond stone bridge on right; long out of bloom?
Twenty minutes after seven, I sit at my window to observe the sun set.
The lower clouds in the north and southwest grow gradually darker as the sun goes down, since we now see the side opposite to the sun, but those high overhead, whose under sides we see reflecting the day, are light.
The small clouds low in the western sky were at first dark also, but, as the sun descends, they are lit up and aglow all but their cores.
Those in the east, though we see their sunward sides, are a dark blue, presaging night, only the highest faintly glowing.
A roseate redness, clear as amber, suffuses the low western sky about the sun, in which the small clouds are mostly melted, only their golden edges still revealed.
The atmosphere there is like some kinds of wine, perchance, or molten cinnabar, if that is red, in which also all kinds of pearls and precious stones are melted.
Clouds generally near the horizon, except near the sun, are now a dark blue.
(The sun sets.) It is half past seven.
The roseate glow deepens to purple.
The low western sky is now, and has been for some minutes, a splendid map, where the fancy can trace islands, continents, and cities beyond compare.
The glow forsakes the high eastern clouds; the uppermost clouds in the west now darken, the glow having forsaken them too; they become a dark blue, and anon their undersides reflect a deep red, like heavy damask curtains, after they had already been dark.
The general redness gradually fades into a pale reddish tinge in the horizon, with a clear white light above it, in which the clouds grow more conspicuous and darker and darker blue, appearing to follow in the wake of the sun, and it is now a quarter to eight, or fifteen minutes after sunset, twenty-five minutes from the first.
A quarter of an hour later, or half an hour after sunset, the white light grows cream colored above the increasing horizon redness, passing through white into blue above.
The western clouds, high and low, are now dark fuscous, not dark blue, but the eastern clouds are not so dark as the western.
Now, about twenty minutes after the first glow left the clouds above the sun's place, there is a second faint fuscous or warm brown glow on the edges of the dark clouds there, sudden and distinct, and it fades again, and it is early starlight, but the tops of the eastern clouds still are white, reflecting the day.
The cream color grows more yellowish or amber.
About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest, i. e. a general atmospheric redness close to the west horizon.
There is more of it, after all, than I expected, for the day has been clear and rather cool, and the evening red is what was the blue haze by day.
The moon, now in her first quarter, now begins to preside, — her light to prevail, — though for the most part eclipsed by clouds.
As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1852
Now is the haying season. See August 5, 1854 ("We are now in the midst of the meadow-haying season.")
Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road. See July 22, 1852 ("Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata?"); July 24, 1853 ("Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate")
Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. [Cirsium pumilum.]
Chenopodium hybridum, maple-leaved goose-foot.
What is that white hairy plant with lanceolate leaves and racemes now, with flat burs, one to three, and a long spine in the midst, and five ovate calyx-leaves left (these turned to one side of the peduncle), burs very adhesive, close to road in meadow just beyond stone bridge on right; long out of bloom?
Every man says his dog will not touch you. Look out, nevertheless.
Twenty minutes after seven, I sit at my window to observe the sun set.
The lower clouds in the north and southwest grow gradually darker as the sun goes down, since we now see the side opposite to the sun, but those high overhead, whose under sides we see reflecting the day, are light.
The small clouds low in the western sky were at first dark also, but, as the sun descends, they are lit up and aglow all but their cores.
Those in the east, though we see their sunward sides, are a dark blue, presaging night, only the highest faintly glowing.
A roseate redness, clear as amber, suffuses the low western sky about the sun, in which the small clouds are mostly melted, only their golden edges still revealed.
The atmosphere there is like some kinds of wine, perchance, or molten cinnabar, if that is red, in which also all kinds of pearls and precious stones are melted.
Clouds generally near the horizon, except near the sun, are now a dark blue.
(The sun sets.) It is half past seven.
The roseate glow deepens to purple.
The low western sky is now, and has been for some minutes, a splendid map, where the fancy can trace islands, continents, and cities beyond compare.
The glow forsakes the high eastern clouds; the uppermost clouds in the west now darken, the glow having forsaken them too; they become a dark blue, and anon their undersides reflect a deep red, like heavy damask curtains, after they had already been dark.
The general redness gradually fades into a pale reddish tinge in the horizon, with a clear white light above it, in which the clouds grow more conspicuous and darker and darker blue, appearing to follow in the wake of the sun, and it is now a quarter to eight, or fifteen minutes after sunset, twenty-five minutes from the first.
A quarter of an hour later, or half an hour after sunset, the white light grows cream colored above the increasing horizon redness, passing through white into blue above.
The western clouds, high and low, are now dark fuscous, not dark blue, but the eastern clouds are not so dark as the western.
Now, about twenty minutes after the first glow left the clouds above the sun's place, there is a second faint fuscous or warm brown glow on the edges of the dark clouds there, sudden and distinct, and it fades again, and it is early starlight, but the tops of the eastern clouds still are white, reflecting the day.
The cream color grows more yellowish or amber.
About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest, i. e. a general atmospheric redness close to the west horizon.
There is more of it, after all, than I expected, for the day has been clear and rather cool, and the evening red is what was the blue haze by day.
The moon, now in her first quarter, now begins to preside, — her light to prevail, — though for the most part eclipsed by clouds.
As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1852
Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road. See July 22, 1852 ("Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata?"); July 24, 1853 ("Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate")
The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now. See July 13, 1852 ("The northern wild red cherry of the woods is ripe, handsome, bright red, but scarcely edible; also, sooner than I expected, ") July 18, 1853 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe.") and note to July 25, 1853 ("Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe."); also August 15, 1852 ("The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side.); August 21, 1854 ("Red choke-berries are dried black; ripe some time ago."); August 25, 1854 (Choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black."); See also July 19, 1852 ("The Cerasus pumila ripe.");July 28, 1856 ("Sand cherry ripe. The fruit droops in umble-like clusters, two to four peduncles together, on each side the axil of a branchlet or a leaf.") August 10, 1860 ("Sand cherry is well ripe — some of it — and tolerable, better than the red cherry or choke-cherry."); August 11, 1852 ("The rum cherry is ripe."); August 15, 1852 (' In E. Hubbard's swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. The birds make much account of them.")
Also the Pyrus arbutifolia. [Black choke-berry] See July 19, 1854 ("Black choke-berry, several days."); July 24, 1853 ("The black choke-berry, probably some days."); August 12, 1858 ("I am also interested in the rich-looking glossy black choke-berries which nobody eats, but which bend down the bushes on every side,—sweetish berries with a dry, and so choking, taste. Some of the bushes are more than a dozen feet high."); September 6, 1857 (" I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit.")
I sit at my window to observe the sun set. See December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it."); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”); January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever,”); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature."); August 14, 1854 ("I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, — to behold and commune with something grander than man.”); November 4, 1857 ("I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting,"); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); December 23, 1859 ("I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set.")
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 © 2009-2021
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