Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/291

Rh clouds seen against a lighter sky look dark and heavy. Now a lower cloud in the east reflects a more yellowish light. The moon, far over the round globe, traveling this way, sends her light forward to yonder cloud from which the news of her coming is reflected to us. The moon's aurora! it is without redness like the dawn of philosophy and its noon, too. At her dawning no cocks crow. How few creatures to hail her rising, only some belated travelers that may be abroad this night. What graduated information of her coming! More and more yellow glows the low cloud with concentrating light, and now the moon's edge suddenly appears above a low bank of cloud not seen before, and she seems to come forward apace without introduction, after all. The steadiness with which she rises with undisturbed serenity, like a queen who has learned to walk before her court, is glorious, and she soon reaches the open sea of the heavens. She seems to advance (so perchance flows the blood in the veins of the beholder) by graceful, sallying essays, trailing her garment up the sky.

July 2, 1854. 4 To Hill. Hear the chip-bird and robin very lively at dawn. From the hill, as the sun rises, I see a fine river-fog wreathing the trees, elms and maples, by the shore. It is clear summer now. The cocks