And still the clear notes of the quail--the quiver of
leaf-shadows over the paper as I write--the sky aloft, with white
clouds, and the sun well declining to the west--the swift darting of
many sand-swallows coming and going, their holes in a neighboring
marl-bank--the odor of the cedar and oak, so palpable, as evening
approaches--perfume, color, the bronze-and-gold of nearly ripen'd
wheat--clover-fields, with honey-scent--the well-up maize, with long
and rustling leaves--the great patches of thriving potatoes, dusky
green, fleck'd all over with white blossoms--the old, warty, venerable
oak above me--and ever, mix'd with the dual notes of the quail, the
soughing of the wind through some near-by pines.
As I rise for return, I linger long to a delicious song-epilogue (is
it the hermit-thrush?) from some bushy recess off there in the swamp,
repeated leisurely and pensively over and over again. This, to the
circle-gambols of the swallows flying by dozens in concentric rings in
the last rays of sunset, like flashes of some airy wheel.
A JULY AFTER-NOON BY THE POND
The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in this pure air--the
white and pink pond-blossoms, with great heart-shaped leaves; the
glassy waters of the creek, the banks, with dense bushery, and the
picturesque beeches and shade and turf; the tremulous, reedy call of
some bird from recesses, breaking the warm, indolent, half-voluptuous
silence; an occasional wasp, hornet, honey-bee or bumble (they hover
near my hands or face, yet annoy me not, nor I them, as they appear to
examine, find nothing, and away they go)--the vast space of the sky
overhead so clear, and the buzzard up there sailing his slow whirl in
majestic spirals and discs; just over the surface of the pond, two
large slate-color'd dragon-flies, with wings of lace, circling and
darting and occasionally balancing themselves quite still, their
wings quivering all the time, (are they not showing off for my
amusement?)--the pond itself, with the sword-shaped calamus; the
water snakes--occasionally a flitting blackbird, with red dabs on his
shoulders, as he darts slantingly by--the sounds that bring out the
solitude, warmth, light and shade--the quawk of some pond duck--(the
crickets and grasshoppers are mute in the noon heat, but I hear the
song of the first cicadas;)--then at some distance the rattle and
whirr of a reaping machine as the horses draw it on a rapid walk
through a rye field on the opposite side of the creek--(what was the
yellow or light-brown bird, large as a young hen, with short neck and
long-stretch'd legs I just saw, in flapping and awkward flight over
there through the trees?)--the prevailing delicate, yet palpable,
spicy, grassy, clovery perfume to my nostrils; and over all,
encircling all, to my sight and soul, the free space of the sky,
transparent and blue--and hovering there in the west, a mass of
white-gray fleecy clouds the sailors call "shoals of mackerel"--the
sky, with silver swirls like locks of toss'd hair, spreading,
expanding--a vast voiceless, formless simulacrum--yet may-be the most
real reality and formulator of everything--who knows?
LOCUSTS AND KATY-DIDS
_Aug.
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