Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/121

Rh wire over water, and they perch on it. This is among the phenomena that cluster about the telegraph. The swallow has a forked tail, and wings and tail are of about the same length

Some fields are almost wholly covered with sheep's sorrel, now turned red, its valves (?). It helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. It is red, marbled, watered, mottled, or waved with greenish, like waving grain, three or four acres of it. To the farmer or grazier it is a troublesome weed, but to the landscape viewer, an agreeable red tinge laid on by the painter. I feel well into summer when I see this red tinge. It appears to be avoided by the cows. The petals of the side-saddle flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially.

The glory of Dennis's lupines is departed, and the white now shows in abundance beneath them. So I cannot walk longer in those fields of Enna in which Proserpine amused herself gathering flowers.

The steam whistle at a distance sounds even like the hum of a bee in a flower. So man's works fall into Nature. The flies hum at mid-afternoon, as if peevish and weary at the length