A year is made up of
a certain series and number
of sensations and thoughts
which have their language in nature.
Henry Thoreau, June 6, 1857
Summer begins with
expanded leaves, shade and warmth.
The season of growth.
The birth of shadow.
These virgin shades of the year
how full of promise.
These clear breezy days
of early June when the
leaves are young and few.
Thin shade so open
that we see the shadow of
each fluttering leaf.
New fresh light-green shoots
of the hemlock contrast with
dark green of last year.
The trembling aspens
offer me a new summer -
fluttering my thoughts.
River summer width,
weeds begin to fill the stream.
Muggy evening: fireflies!
(The first I have seen.)
Early June now --
Clearer days less haze and
more sparkling water.
New life and motion,
the season of waving boughs,
the first half of June.
Crows with ragged wings
noiselessly circle their nest
high in a white pine.
Away from the town
and deeper into the night
whip-poor-wills, fireflies.
Cool unexhausted
morning vigor answers the
note of the wood thrush.
Floating homeward, I
count devil's-needles at rest
on my idle sail.
Never nearer to
partridges drumming to-night,
such space-filling sound.
New reflections now
from the under sides of leaves
turned up by the wind.
I sit in the shade
at noon to hear a wood thrush.
and smell the dry leaves.
The distant river
reflects the light at this hour
like molten silver.
Yellow sun of spring
becomes midsummer flower,
red sun of June heat.
The singing of birds
wakes me these mornings at dawn.
The window open.
The rain comes at a
time and place that baffles all
our calculations.
Suddenly the gust,
big drops slanting from the north.
Birds fly rudderless.
Puddles in the streets,
the first rain of consequence
for at least three weeks.
It is a warm rain.
I sit all day and evening,
my window open.
The deep scarlet of
the wild moss rose, half open,
glowing in the grass.
Sometime we are calmed
like a still lake when there is
not a breath of wind.
All wilderness is
transmitted to us in the
strain of the wood thrush.
Beautiful clear air,
the glossy light-reflecting
greenness of the woods.
A sky without clouds:
a meadow without flowers
a sea without sails.
The sun comes out bright
shining on Fair Haven Pond
rippled by the wind.
Bright silvery light
reflected from fresh green leaves;
the dark shade of June.
To see lightning with
serenity, all nature
with wonder and awe.
Evening. 7 p.m.
A record of the sunset.
The moon more than half.
The sun not yet set.
Clouds in west edged with fiery red.
Robins faintly sing.
Now the sun is down.
A low mist close to the shore,
I hear the pea-wai
and the wood thrush and
the whip-poor-will -- before
I have seen a star.
Now it is starlight.
Did that dark cloud conceal the
evening star before?
Starlight! Mark the hour.
When last daylight disappears
and night (nyx) sets in.
The red undersides
of the white lily pads
exposed by the wind.
June 30 .
Fields woods and meadows
brilliant and fair seen through clear
sparkling breezy air.
A Book of the Seasons , by Henry Thoreau, June Days
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 © 2009-2025
