Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/342

332 The sun has set. The dew is falling fast. Some fine clouds, which have just escaped being condensed in dew, hang on the skirts of day, and make the attraction in our western sky, that part of day's gross atmosphere which has escaped the clutches of the night, and is not enough condensed to fall to earth, soon to be gilded by the sun's parting rays; remarkably finely divided clouds, a very fine mackerel sky, or rather as if one had sprinkled that part of the sky with a brush, the outline of the whole being that of several large sprigs of fan coral. They grow darker and darker, and now are reddened, while dark-blue bars of cloud of a wholly different character lie along the northwest horizon.

July 5, 1854. To White Pond. The blue curls and fragrant life-everlasting with their refreshing aroma show themselves now pushing up in dry fields, bracing to the thought.—On Lupine Knoll picked up a dark-colored spear head three and a half inches long, lying on the bare sand, so hot that I could not long hold it tight in my hand. Now the earth begins to be parched, the corn curls, and the four-leaved loosestrife, etc., wilt and wither.

July 5, 1856. The large evening primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till sometime between 6.30 and 8, or sundown. It was not open when I went to bathe, but