Page:Autumn. From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/43

Rh rain. Through this I see the trees beginning to put on their October colors, and the creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore.

The Aster multiflorus may be easily confounded with the Aster tradescanti. Like it, it whitens the roadside in some places. It has purplish disks, but a less straggling top than the tradescanti.

Sept. 27, 1857. How out of all proportion to the value of an idea, when you come to one, in Hindoo literature for instance, is the historical fact about it, the when, where, etc., it was actually expressed, and what precisely it might signify to a sect of worshipers! Anything that is called history of India or of the world is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless.

White birches have fairly begun to yellow, and blackberry vines here and there in sunny places look like a streak of blood in the grass. I sit on the hillside at Miles's Swamp. A wood bine, investing the leading stem of an elm in the swamp quite to its top, is seen as an erect, slender red column through the thin and yellowing foliage of the elm. As I sit there, I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays. Perhaps it is both because the young are grown, and their food, the small birds, are flying in flocks