Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/330

320 their callow young lie panting under the sweet gale and rose-bushes in the swamp, waiting for their parents to fetch them food.

June is an up-country month when our air and landscape is most like that of a mountainous region, full of freshness, with the scent of fern by the wayside.

July 4, 1840. 4 The Townsend Light Infantry encamped last night in my neighbor's enclosure.—The night still breathes slumberously over field and wood when a few soldiers gather about one tent in the twilight, and their band plays an old Scotch air with bugle and drum and fife attempered to the season. It seems like the morning hymn of creation. The first sounds of the awakening camp mingled with the chastened strains which so sweetly salute the dawn, impress me as the morning prayer of an army. And now the morning gun fires. I am sure none are cowards now. These strains are the roving dreams which steal from tent to tent, and break forth into distinct melody. They are the soldier's morning thought. Each man awakes himself with lofty emotions, and would do some heroic deed. You need preach no homily to him. He is the stuff they are made of.

We may well neglect many things, provided we overlook them.

When to-day I saw the &quot;Great Ball&quot; rolled