Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/204

194 blueberry and other bushes, and when the bird flew up alarmed, I went to the place, but could see no water, which makes me doubt if water is necessary to it in making the sound. Perhaps it thrusts its bill so deep as to reach water where it is dry on the surface. It sounds more like wood chopping or pumping because you seem to hear the echo of the stroke or the reverse motion of the pump handle. After the warm weather has come, both morning and evening you hear the bittern pumping in the fens. It does not sound loud near at hand, and it is remarkable that it should be heard so far. Perhaps it is pitched on a favorable key. Is it not a call to its mate? Methinks that in the resemblance of this note to rural sounds, to sounds made by farmers, the security of the bird is designed.

Dry fields have now a reddish tinge from the seeds of the grass. Lying with my window open these warm, even sultry nights, I hear the sonorously musical trump of the bull-frogs from time to time from some distant shore of the river, as if the world were given up to them. When I wake thus at midnight, and hear this sonorous trump from far in the horizon, I need not go to Dante for an idea of the infernal regions. I do not know for a time in what world I am. It affects my morals, and all questions take a new aspect from this sound. It is the