August 6
Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story.
Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming. With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc ., cease?
All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty. It was designed to impress man. We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower.
I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom, having crowded himself in deep amid the dense florets, out of the reach of birds, while the sky was overcast. What a sweet couch!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal,
August 6, 1852
We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower. See August 3, 1852 ("A splendid entire rainbow after a slight shower, with two reflections of it, outermost broad red, passing through yellow to green, then narrow red, then blue or indigo (not plain what), then faint red again. It is too remarkable to be remarked on."); June 5, 1853 (“The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.”); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower.”); May 16, 1852 ("The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose.”)
I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom, having crowded himself in deep amid the dense florets, out of the reach of birds, while the sky was overcast. See August 4, 1852 (“The little bees have gone to sleep amid the clethra blossoms in the rain and are not yet aroused.”)
Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story. See August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 22, 1859 ("The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is.")
Rainbows remind us.
Kosmos – or beauty – is the
Greek name for the world.
We live as it were
like a bee asleep in a
thistle blossom.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
August 6.
5 a. m. — I do not hear this morning the breathing of chip-birds nor the song of robins. Are the mornings now thus ushered in? Are they as spring like? Has not the year grown old? Methinks we do ourselves, at any rate, somewhat tire of the season and observe less attentively and with less interest the opening of new flowers and the song of the birds. It is the signs of the fall that affect us most. It is hard to live in the summer content with it. To Cliffs. How different the feeble twittering of the birds here at sunrise from the full quire of the spring! Only the wood thrush, a huckleberry-bird or two, or chickadee, the scream of a flicker or a jay, or the caw of a crow, and commonly only an alarmed note of a robin. A solitary peawai may be heard, perchance, or a red-eye, but no thrashers, or catbirds, or oven-birds, or the jingle of the chewink. I hear the ominous twittering of the goldfinch over all.
The village is seen through a thin veil of fog. I just distinguish the tree-tops beneath me in the southwest, and the light-colored river through the mist, which is gathering and preparing to retreat before the sun. From a tree-top I see the surface of Walden, whose shores are laid bare, the sun being directly opposite, and there fore the surface of the lake is a bright sheen seen through some stately pines near the railroad. This bright, silvery sheen comes through the dispersing mists to me, its shores being still concealed by fog, and a low white scudding mist is seen against the more distant dark clouds, drifting westward over all the forests before the sun. Gathered some of those large, sometimes pear-shaped, sweet blue huckleberries which grow amid the rubbish where woods have just been cut. A farmer told me that he lost a good many doves by their being trodden upon by oxen.
P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook and hill beyond.
I still remember how much bluer those early blueberries were that grew in the shade.
Have just finished Gilpin's "Lakes of Cumberland." An elegant writer of English prose. I wish he would look at scenery sometimes not with the eye of an artist. It is all side screens and fore screens and near distances and broken grounds with him. I remark that in his tour through Wales, and afterward through Cumberland and Westmoreland, he never ascends to the top of a mountain, and if he gets up higher than usual, he merely says that the view is grand and amusing, as if because it was not easy to paint, or picturesque, it was not worth beholding, or deserving of serious attention. However, his elegant moderation, his discrimination, and real interest in nature excuse many things.
Milkweeds and trumpet-flowers are important now, to contrast with the cool, dark, shaded sides and recesses of moist copses. I see their red under the willows and alders everywhere against a dark ground. Methinks that blue, next to red, attracts us in a flower.
Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story.
Next to our blood is our prospect of heaven. Does not the blood in fact show blue in the covered veins and arteries, when distance lends enchantment to the view? The sight of it is more affecting than I can describe or account for.
The rainbow, after all, does not attract an attention proportionate to its singularity and beauty. Moses (?) was the last to comment on it. It is a phenomenon more aside from the common course of nature. Too distinctly a sign or symbol of something to be disregarded. What form of beauty could be imagined more striking and conspicuous? An arch of the most brilliant and glorious colors completely spanning [the] heavens before the eyes of men! Children look at it. It is wonderful that all men do not take pains to behold it. At some waterfalls it is permanent, as long as the sun shines. Plainly thus the Maker of the universe sets the seal to his covenant with men. Many articles are thus clinched. Designed to impress man. All men beholding it begin to understand the significance of the Greek epithet applied to the world, — name for the world, — - Kosmos, or beauty. It was designed to impress man. We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower.
Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming, i. e. perhaps in the same propor tion. With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter was heard, did not the bobo link, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc., cease?
I see some delicate ferns, in the low damp woods by the brook, which have turned whitish at the extremity. Cohush berries have just begun to be white, as if they contained a pearly venom, — wax white with a black spot (or very dark brown), imp-eyed. The leaves of one of the cornels (alternate-leaved or else round-leaved) are, some of them, turned lake-color. The weeds are now very high and rank in moist wood-paths and along such streams as this. I love to follow up the course of the brook and see the cardinal- flowers which stand in its midst above the rocks, their brilliant scarlet the more interesting in this open, but dark, cellar-like wood; the small purple fringed orchises with long dense spikes, all flower, — for that is often all that is seen above the leaves of other plants (is not this the last flower of this peculiar flower kind, — i. e. all flower and color, the leaves subordinated ?) ; and the Mimulus ringens, abundant and handsome in these low and rather shady places. Many flowers, of course, like the last, are prominent, if you visit such scenes as this, though one who confines himself to the road may never see them. From Smith's Hill beyond, there is as good a view of the mountains as from any place in our neighbor hood, because you look across the broad valley in which Concord lies first of all. The foreground is on a larger scale and more proportionate. The Peterboro Hills are to us as good as mountains. Hence, too, I see that fair river-reach, in the north.
I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom (a pasture thistle), the loiterer; having crowded himself in deep amid the dense florets, out of the reach of birds, while the sky was overcast. What a sweet couch!
As I always notice the tone of the bell when I go into a new town, so surely, methinks, I notice some pe culiarity in the accent and manners of the inhabitants. The bristly aralia berries are ripe; like the sarsapa- rilla, a blue black. The shorn fields are acquiring a late green or refresh [sic]. They are greener, much, than a month ago, before the grass was cut. For ten days the weather has been cool and the air full of moisture. Is it not because of the increase of vegeta tion, the leaves being multiplied, the weeds more rank, the shadows heavier ? This is what is called dog-day weather. The water in the river and pond is quite cool, and it is more bracing and invigorating to bathe, though less luxurious. Methinks the water cannot again be as warm as it has been. Erechthites hieracifolia, apparently a day or two. Lespedeza capitata. Aralia racemosa, how long ? — petty morel, spikenard, like a large sarsaparilla. Hieracium paniculatum. Lycopus Virginicus (with five calyx -teeth). Solidagos, lanceolata ( ?) and puberula ( ?). Stellaria media at R. W. E.'s. Is it the same, then, which I saw in Cheney's garden so early ? That clammy, hairy-leaved cerastium (?) I still see, with a starry white flower. Was it the Urtica gracilis I examined, or the common nettle ? What is that plant at the brook with hairy under sides now budded ?
