Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/128

118 surface, but on transferring it to the darkest patches I saw the halo there equally. It serves to make the outline of the shadow more distinct.

But now for last night. A few fire-flies in the meadow. Do they shine, though invisibly, by day? Is their candle lighted by day?—It is not night-fall till the whippoorwills begin to sing.

As I entered the Deep Cut, I was affected by beholding the first faint reflection of genuine, unmixed moonlight on the eastern sand-bank, while the horizon, yet red with day, was tinging the western side. What an interval between these two lights! The light of the moon, in what age of the world does that fall upon the earth? The moonlight was as the earliest and dewy morning light, and the daylight tinge reminded me much more of the night. There were the old and new dynasties contrasted, and an interval between, not recognized in history, which time could not span. Nations have flourished in that light.

When I had climbed the sand-bank on the left, I felt the warmer current or stratum of air on my cheek, like a blast from a furnace.

The white stems of the pines which reflected the weak light, standing thick and close together, while their lower branches were gone, reminded me that the pines are only longer grasses, which