The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
It is worth the while
to walk in wet weather and
concentrate your thoughts.
At this season we
have gentle rain-storms making
the aftermath green.
The sprightly kingbird
twitters above glossy leaves
of the swamp white oak.
August 7, 1858
All the milkmen and
their horses stand still to hear
the Calliope.
Already I hear
the jays with more distinctness–
like fall and winter
August 7, 1853
The fruit of my spring
and summer ripen – its seed
hardens within me.
August 7. 2014
At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green. August 7, 1852
It is worth the while to walk in wet weather; the earth and leaves are strewn with pearls . . . soothing and inducing reflection. August 7, 1853
Heard this forenoon what. . .turned out to be the new steam-whistle music, what they call the Calliope (!) in the next town.. . . All the milkmen and their horses stood still to hear it. The horses stood it remarkably well. It was not so musical as the ordinary whistle. August 7, 1856
I am struck by the localness of the fogs. . . . If we awake into a fog it does not occur to us that the inhabitants of a neighboring town may have none. August 7, 1860
There is a light on the earth and leaves, as if they were burnished. It is the glistening autumnal side of summer. August 7, 1854
The most luxuriant groves of black willow, as I recall them, are on the inside curves, or on sandy capes between the river and a bay, or sandy banks parallel with the firmer shore. . . but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. August 7, 1858
The Sternothaerus odoratus . . . climbs highest up their stems. . . and is frequently caught and hung by the neck in its forks. August 7, 1858
To Tarbell Hill again with the Emersons, a-berrying. Very few berries this year. August 7, 1855
With a berry party, ride to Conantum. August 7, 1856
Hemp, perhaps a week. .August 7, 1856
The birds for some weeks have not sung as in the spring. Do I not already hear the jays with more distinctness, as in the fall and winter? August 7, 1853.
I see the leaves of the two smallest johnsworts reddening. The common johnswort is quite abundant this year and still yellows the fields. August 7, 1853
The objects I behold correspond to my mood. August 7, 1853.
[The poet] sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. August 7, 1853.
Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness ? August 7, 1854
A thicker mist or mizzle falls, and you are prepared for rain. August 7, 1853
Already some of my small thoughts — fruit of my spring life — are ripe, like the berries which feed the first broods of birds; and other some are prematurely ripe and bright, like the lower leaves of the herbs which have felt the summer's drought. August 7, 1854
The river and brooks look late and cool. The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts. August 7, 1853
The waters now are some degrees cooler. August 7, 1854
I think that within a week I have heard the alder cricket, – a clearer and shriller sound from the leaves in low grounds, a clear shrilling out of a cool moist shade, an autumnal sound. The year is in the grasp of the crickets, and they are hurling it round swiftly on its axle. August 7, 1853.
The cool nocturnal creak of the crickets is heard in the mid-afternoon. August 7, 1854
The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over. August 7, 1853.
The sprightly kingbird glances and twitters above the glossy leaves of the swamp white oak. Perchance this tree, with its leaves glossy above and whitish beneath, best expresses the life of the kingbird and is its own tree. August 7, 1858
Winds show the under sides of the leaves. August 7, 1854
I feel a cool vein in the breeze, which braces my thought, and I pass with pleasure over sheltered and sunny portions of the sand where the summer's heat is undiminished, and I realize what a friend I am losing. August 7, 1854
In mid-summer . . . I am not so much reminded of former years, as of existence prior to years. August 7, 1854
[That] moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky. . . We see the rainbow apparently when we are on the edge of the rain, just as the sun is setting. August 7, 1852
 |
This off side of summer
glistens like a burnished shield
August 7, 2014 |
This off side of summer glistens like a burnished shield. August 7, 1854
Toward night great loads of hay are seen rolling slowly along the river’s bank, — on the firmer ground there, — and perhaps fording the stream itself, toward the distant barn, followed by a troop of tired haymakers. August 7, 1854
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character? August 7, 1854
*****
August 7, 2017
April 4, 1853 ("We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm with satisfaction. Our comfort is positive then. We are all compact, and our thoughts collected.")May 23, 1853 ("Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”)
June 6, 1857 ("Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.") June 26, 1852 ("There is a flower for every mood of the mind").
July 18, 1852 (" Now the fogs have begun, in midsummer and mid-haying time")
July 23, 1851 ("The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth") July 23, 1860 ("All trees and shrubs which have light-colored or silvery under sides to their leaves, but especially the swamp white oak and the red maple, are now very bright and conspicuous in the strong wind after the rain of the morning")July 24, 1852 ("When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination.")
July 25, 1852 ("The wood thrush and the jay and the robin sing around me here, and birds are heard singing from the midst of the fog. And in one short hour this sea will all evaporate and the sun be reflected from farm windows") July 26, 1854 ("Almost every bush now offers a wholesome and palatable diet to the wayfarer, — . . . The broods of birds just matured find thus plenty to eat.”)
July 28, 1854 (“ Having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year”)
July 30, 1852 ("How long since I heard a veery? Do they go, or become silent, when the goldfinches herald the autumn? After midsummer we have a belated feeling and are forward to see in each sight and hear in each sound some presage of the fall, just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life.")
July 31, 1855 ("
Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week.")
July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.") July 31, 1859 ("The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now"
August 1, 1852 ("Singing birds are scarce. I have not heard the catbird or the thrush for a long time. The pewee sings yet.")
August 2, 1854 ("A few sparrows sing as in the morning and the spring; also a peawai and a chewink")
August 2, 1854("The woodland quire has steadily diminished in volume.")
August 2, 1854 ("For the first time for a month, at least, I am reminded that thought is possible . . . I float over or through the deeps of silence. It is the first silence I have heard for a month") August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe.") August 4, 1851 (" I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn.)
August 4, 1852 ("I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet female.") August 4, 1852 ("The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this.")
August 4, 1853 ("The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring."). August 4, 1854 ("A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.")
August 4, 1854 ("After sunset, a very low, thick, and flat white fog like a napkin, on the meadows, which ushers in a foggy night.")
August 5, 1856 ("At the Assabet stone bridge . . . apparently the Apocynum cannabinum . . .twenty to thirty flowers at end of a branch")
August 5, 1858 ("[Willows] resound still with the sprightly twitter of the kingbird, that aerial and spirited bird hovering over them, swallow-like, which loves best, methinks, to fly where the sky is reflected beneath him. The kingbird, by his activity and lively note and his white breast, keeps the air sweet.") August 6, 1852 ("Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming.") August 6, 1852 ( 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") August 6, 1852 ("Has not the year grown old? . . . It is the signs of the fall that affect us most.")
August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty") August 6, 1854 ("The sun is quite hot to-day, but the wind is cool . . . Methinks that after this date there is commonly a vein of coolness in the wind") August 6, 1854 ("Very grateful is this anticipation of the fall, — coolness and cloud, and the crickets steadily chirping in mid-afternoon.") August 6, 1855 ("Hear the autumnal crickets.")
August 6, 1855 ("Saw a Sternotherus odoratus, caught by the neck and hung in the fork between a twig and main trunk of a black willow,") August 6, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent")
August 6, 1858 ("If our sluggish river. . .has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast")
August 8, 1852 (""I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.")
August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow.") August 9, 1853 ("How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall!")
August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.") August 9, 1856 ("The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over. Does the last always utter his twitter when ascending? .")
August12, 1858 ("It is surprising how young birds, especially sparrows of all kinds, abound now, and bobolinks and wood pewees and kingbirds") August 12, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is a prominent and common one now.")
August 15, 1858 (" I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In several instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly." August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”) August 19, 1851 ("
The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind.")
August 20, 1854 ("The woodland quire is dissolved. That, if I remember, was about a fortnight ago. The concert is over.")
August 22, 1853 ("
A blue jay screams, and one or two fly over, showing to advantage their handsome forms, especially their regular tails, wedge-formed.")
August 23, 1858 ("There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter.")
August 25, 1856 ("Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river?")
August 28, 1852 ("Hemp still in blossom.”)
August 30, 1851 ("Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective.") September 21, 1859 ("Jays are more frequently heard of late, maybe because other birds are more silent.") January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year")
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025
https://tinyurl.com/HDT07August
