Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/15

Rh England or the United States. I hear two or three prolonged blasts, as I am walking along, some sultry noon, in the midst of the still woods,—a sound which I know to be produced by human breath, the most sonorous parts of which alone reach me; and I see in my mind's eye the hired men and master dropping the implements of their labor in the field, and wending their way with a sober satisfaction toward the house. I see the well-sweep rise and fall. I see the preparatory ablutions, and the table laden with the smoking meal. It is a significant hum in a distant part of the hive

How much lupine is now in full bloom on bare sandy brows or promontories, running into meadows where the sod is half worn away and the sand exposed! The geraniums are now getting to be common. Hieracium venosum just out on this peak, and the snapdragon catchfly is here, abundantly in blossom a little after five ,—a pretty little flower, the petals dull crimson beneath or varnished mahogany color, and rose-tinted white within or above. It closed on my way home, but opened again in water in the evening. Its opening in the night chiefly is a fact which interests and piques me. Do any in sects visit it then?—Lambkill just beginning,—the very earliest New, bright, glossy, light-green leaves of the umbelled wintergreen