Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/20

10 the spirit of it. Its fixed air begins to stir and escape. Also the robin's morning song is heard, as in the spring,—earlier than the notes of most other birds, thus bringing back the spring; now rarely heard or noticed in the course of the day.

Four To Nashawtuck. I go to the river in a fog—through which I cannot see more than a dozen rods—three or four times as deep as the houses. As I row down the stream, the dark, dim outlines of the trees on the banks appear coming to meet me on the one hand, while they retreat and are soon concealed in it on the other. My strokes soon bring them behind me. The birds are wide awake, as if knowing that this fog presages a fair day. I ascend Nashawtuck from the north side. I am aware that I yield to the same influence which inspires the birds and the cockerels whose hoarse courage I hear now vaunted. I would crow like chanticleer in the morning, with all the lustiness that the new day imparts, without thinking of the evening, when I and all of us shall go to roost; with all the humility of the cock that takes his perch upon the highest rail and wakes the country with his clarion brag. Shall not men be inspired as much as cockerels? My feet are soon wet with fog. It is indeed a vast dew. Are not the clouds another kind of dew?