Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/139

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SUMMER.
129

ing. Looking up, I see many more half-formed leaves hanging wilted or withered. I think that the leaves of these trees were especially injured by the cold wind of the 10th, and are just now falling in consequence. I can tell when I am under a button-wood by the number of leaves on the ground. With the other trees it was mainly a mechanical injury, done rather by the wind than the cold, but the tender shoots of this tree were killed.

June 14, 1840.

"In glory and in joy,
Behind his plough, upon the mountain side."

I seemed to see the woods wave on a hundred mountains, as I read these lines, and the distant rustling of their leaves reached my ear.

June 14, 1851. Full moon last night. Set out on a walk to Conantum at 7 p. m. A serene evening, the sun going down behind clouds. A few white or slightly-shaded piles of clouds floating in the eastern sky, but a broad, clear, mellow cope left for the moon to rise into. An evening for poets to describe. As I proceed along the back road I hear the lark still singing in the meadow, and the bobolink, the golden robin on the elms, and the swallows twittering about the barns. All Nature is in an expectant attitude. Before Goodwin's house at the open-