Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/242

232 mountain rim. The mountains are washed in air. The sunshine now seen far away on fields and hills in the northwest looks cool and wholesome like the yellow grass in the meadows. I am too late for the white-pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and green, and the male flowers effete. The sun now comes out bright, though westering, and shines on Fair Haven, which, rippled by the wind, is of an unusual clay-muddy color. There are little recesses a rod or two square in bosky woods which have not grown fast, where a fine wiry grass invites to lie down in the shade, under the shrub-oaks on the edge of the, well-meadow-head field.

8.30 To Conantum. Moon half full. Fields dusky. The evening star and one other bright one near the moon. It is a cool, but pretty still night. Methinks I am less thoughtful than I was last year at this time. The flute I now hear from the Depot field does not find such caverns to echo and resound in within me, no such answering depths. Our minds should echo at least as many times as a mammoth cave to every musical sound. It should awaken reflections in us.

Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, only possible at this hour. Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! Some drink and gamble. He plays some well-known