Aug. 17. For a day or two it
has been quite cool, a coolness that was felt even when sitting by an open
window in a thin coat on the west side of the house in the morning, and you
naturally sought the sun at that hour.
The coolness
concentrated ,your thought, however.
As 1 could not
command a sunny window, I went abroad on the morning of the 15th and lay in the
sun in the fields in my thin coat, though it was rather cool even there.
I feel as if this
coolness would do me good.
If it only makes my
life more pensive!
Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness ?
There is a
certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek.
It is positively
joyful to me.
It saves my life from
being trivial.
My life flows with a
deeper current, no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and
shrunken by the summer heats.
This coolness comes
to condense the dews and clear the atmosphere.
The stillness seems
more deep and significant.
Each sound seems to
come from out a greater thoughtfulness in nature, as if nature: had acquired
some character and mind.
The cricket, the
gurgling stream, the rushing wind amid the trees, all speak to me soberly yet
encouragingly of the steady onward progress of the universe.
My heart leaps into
my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods.
I, whose life was but
yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover my spirits, my
spirituality, through my hearing.
I see a goldfinch go
twittering through the still, louring day, and am reminded of the peeping
flocks which will soon herald the thoughtful season.
Ah! if I could so
live that there should be no desultory moment in all my life! that in the
trivial season, when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might he ripe also! that
I could match nature always with my moods! that in each season when some part
of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail
to flourish!
Ah, I would walk, I
would sit and sleep, with natural piety!
What if I could pray aloud or to
myself as I went along by the brooksides a cheerful prayer like the birds!
For
joy I could embrace the earth; I shall delight to be buried in it.
And then to think of
those I love among men, who will know that I love them though I tell them not!
I sometimes feel as if I were rewarded merely for expecting
better hours.
I did not despair of
worthier moods, and now I have
occasion to be grateful for the flood of life that is flowing over me.
I am not so poor : I
can smell the ripening apples; the very rills are deep; the autumnal flowers,
the Trichostetna dichotomum, -not only its bright blue flower above the sand,
but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season, - feed my spirit,
endear the earth to me, make me value myself and rejoice; the quivering of
pigeons' wings reminds me of the tough fibre of the air which they rend.
I thank you, God.
I do not deserve
anything, I am unworthy of the least regard; and yet I am made to rejoice.
I am impure and
worthless, and yet the world is gilded for my delight and holidays are prepared
for me, and my path is strewn with flowers.
But I cannot thank
the Giver; I cannot even whisper my thanks to those human friends I have.
It seems to me that I
am more rewarded for my expectations than for anything I do or can do.
Ah, I would not tread
on a cricket in whose song is such a revelation, so soothing and cheering to my
car!
Oh, keep my senses pure!
And why should I speak to my friends ? for how rarely is it
that I am I; and are they, then, they?
We will meet, then, far away.
The seeds of the
summer are getting dry and falling from a thousand nodding heads.
If I did not know you
through thick and thin, how should I know you at all ?
Ah, the very brooks seem
fuller of reflections than they were!
Ah, such provoking sibylline sentences
they are!
The shallowest is all at once unfathomable.
How can that depth be
fathomed where a man may see himself reflected ?
The rill I stopped to drink at
I drink in more than I expected.
I satisfy and still
provoke the thirst of thirsts.
Nut Meadow Brook
where it crosses the road beyond Jenny Dugan's that was.
I do not drink in
vain.
I mark that brook as
if I had swallowed a water snake that would live in my stomach.
I have swallowed
something worth the while.
The day is not what
it was before I stooped to drink.
Ah, I shall hear from
that draught!
It is not in vain that I have drunk.
I have drunk an
arrowhead.
It flows from where
all fountains rise.
How many ova have I
swallowed?
Who knows what will be hatched within me?
There were some seeds of
thought, methinks, floating in that water, which are expanding in me.
The man must not
drink of the running streams, the living waters, who is not prepared to have
all nature reborn in him, - to suckle monsters.
The snake in my
stomach lifts his head to my mouth at the sound of running water.
When was it that I
swallowed a snake?
I have got rid of the snake in my stomach.
I drank of stagnant
waters once.
That accounts for it.
I caught him by the
throat and drew him out, and had a well day after all.
Is there not such a
thing as getting rid of the snake which you have swallowed when young, when
thoughtless you stooped and drank at stagnant waters, which has worried you in
your waking hours and in your sleep ever since, and appropriated the life that
was yours ?
Will he not ascend into your mouth at the sound of running water-
Then catch him boldly by the head and draw him out, though you may think his tail
be curled about your vitals.
The farmers are just
finishing their meadow-haying.
(To-day is Sunday.)
Those who have early potatoes may be digging them, or doing any other job which
the haying has obliged them to postpone.
For six weeks or more
this has been the farmer's work, to shave the surface of the fields and meadows
clean.
This is done all over
the country.
The razor is passed
over these parts of nature's face the country over.
A thirteenth labor
which methinks would have broken the back of Hercules, would have given him a
memorable sweat, accomplished with what sweating of scythes and early and late!
I chance [to] know one young man who has lost his life in this season's
campaign, by overdoing.
In haying time some
men take double wages, and they are engaged long before in the spring.
To shave all the
fields and meadows of New England clean! If men did this but once, and not
every year, we should never hear the last of that labor ; it would be more
famous in each farmer's case than Buonaparte's road over the Simplon.
It has no other
bulletin but the truthful "Farmer's Almanac.
" Ask them where scythe-snaths are made and sold, and
rifles too, if it is not a real labor.
In its very weapons
and its passes it has the semblance of war.
Mexico was won with
less exertion and less true valor than are required to do one season's baying
in New England.
The former work was
done by those who played truant and ran awav from the latter.
Those Mexicans were
mown dowT1 more easily than the summer's crop of grass in many a, Farmer's
fields.
Is there not some
work in New England men`
Haying is no work for marines, nor for
deserters ; nor for United States troops, so called, nor for West Point cadets.
It would wilt them,
and they would desert.
[lave they not
deserted ? and run off to West Point?
Every field is a battle-field to the mower, - a pitched
battle too, - and whole winrows of dead have covered it in the course of the
season.
Earlv and late the
farmer has gone forth with his formidable scythe, weapon of time, Time's
weapon, and fought the ground inch by inch.
It is the summer's
enterprise.
And if we were a more
poetic people, horns would be blown to celebrate its completion.
There might be a
Haymakers' Day.
New England's
peaceful battles.
At Bunker Hill there
were some who stood at the railfence and behind the winrows of new-mown hay.
' They have not yet quitted the field.
They stand there
still ; they alone have not retreated.
The Polygala
sanguinea, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red or purple heads.
The dandelion still
blossoms, and the lupine still, belated.
I have been to
Tarbell's Swamp by the Second Division this afternoon, and to the Marlborough
road.
It has promised rain
all day ; cloudy and still and rather cool ; from time to time a few drops
gently spitting, but no shower.
The landscape wears a
sober autumnal look.
I hear a drop or two
on my hat.
I wear a thick coat.
The birds seem to
know that it will not rain just yet.
The swallows skim low
over the pastures, twittering as they fly near me with forked tail, dashing
near me as if I scared up insects for them.
I see where a
squirrel has been eating hazelnuts on a stump.
Tarbell's Swamp is
mainly composed of low and even but dense beds of Andromeda calyculata, or
dwarf a dromeda, which bears the *early flower in the spring.
' Stark and his
companions met the enemy in the hay-field.
Here and there,
mingled with it, is the water (?) andromeda ; also pitch pines, birches, hardback,
and the common alder (Alms serrulata), and, in separate and lower beds, the
cranberry ; and probably the Rhodora Canadensis might be found.
The lead-colored
berries of the Viburnum dentatum now.
Cow-wheat and
indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side, and Norway cinquefoil.
I detected a wild
apple on the Marlborough road by its fragrance, in the thick woods ; small
stems, four inches in diameter, falling over or leaning like rays on every
side; a clean white fruit, the ripest yellowish, a pleasant acid.
The fruit covered the
ground.
It is unusual to meet
with an early apple thus wild in the thickest woods.
It seemed admirable
to me.
One of the noblest of
fruits.
With green specks
under the skin.
Prenanthes alba,
white-flowering prenanthes, with its strange halbert and variously shaped
leaves ; neottia ; and hypericum.
I hear the rain (11 P.M.)
distilling upon the ground, wetting the grass and leaves.
The melons needed it.
Their leaves were
curled and their fruit stinted.
I am less somnolent
for the cool season.
I wake to a perennial
day.
The hayer's work is
done, but I hear no boasting, no firing of guns nor ringing of bells.
He celebrates it by
going about the work he had postponed "till after haying"!
If all
this steadiness and valor were spent upon some still worthier enterprise!!
All
men's employments, mens trades and professions, in some of their aspects are
attractive.
Hence the boy I knew,
having sucked cider at a minister's cider-mill, resolved to be a minister and
make cider, not 'thinking, boy as he was, how little fun there was in being a
minister, willing to purchase that pleasure at any price. 
.jpg/220px-Moerasdroogbloem_plant_Gnaphalium_uliginosum_(1).jpg)
