Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/150

140. The rhythm is very like that of the tanager, but the strain is perfectly clear and sweet. One sits on the bare dead twig of a chestnut high over the road at Gourgas wood, and over my head, and sings clear and loud at regular intervals, the strain about ten or fifteen seconds long, rising and swelling to the end with various modulations. Another, singing in emulation, regularly answers it, alternating with it, from a distance, at least a quarter of a mile off. It sings thus long at a time, and I leave it singing there, regardless of me.

June 14, 1860. To 2d Division The white water ranunculus is abundant in the brook, out, say a week, and well open in the sunshine. It is a pretty white flower, with yellow centre, seen above the dark-brown green leaves in the rapid water, its peduncle recurved so as to present the flower erect half an inch to an inch above the surface, while the buds are submerged.

June 15, 1840. I stood by the river to-day, considering the forms of the elms reflected in the water. For every oak and birch, too, growing on the hill-top, as well as for these elms and willows, there is a graceful, ethereal, and ideal tree making down from the roots, and sometimes Nature in high tides brings her mirror to its foot and makes it visible. Anxious Nature sometimes reflects from pools and puddles the objects which