Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/332

near the horizon. Small wisps of cloud are already fuscous and dark, seen against the light, as in the west at evening. It being Sunday morning I hear no early stirring farmer driving over a bridge. . . . The sound of a whippoorwill is wafted from the woods. Now in the Corner road the hedges are alive with twittering sparrows, a blue-bird or two, etc. The daylight now balances the moonlight. How short the nights! The last traces of day have not disappeared much before 10 o'clock, or perchance 9.30, and before 3 a. m. you see them again in the east (probably 2.30), leaving about five hours of solid night, the sun so soon coming round again. The robins sing, but not so long and loud as in the spring. I have not been awakened by them latterly in the mornings. Is it my fault? Ah, those mornings when you are awakened by the singing, the matins of the birds! . . . Methinks I saw the not yet extinguished lights of one or two fire flies in the darker ruts in the grass in Conant's meadow. The moon yields to the sun, she pales even in the presence of the dawn. It is chiefly the spring birds that I hear at this hour, and in each dawn the spring is thus revived. The notes of the sparrows, and the blue-birds and the robin, have a prominence now which they have not by day. The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well