Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/351

Rh to purity, to heroism, to literary effort, even, as are never day-born.

One of those mornings which usher in no day, but rather an endless morning, a protracted auroral season, for clouds prolong the twilight the livelong day.

Now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of the flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds. The golden robin, the bobolink, etc., are rarely heard.

I rejoice when in a dream I have loved virtue and nobleness.

Where is Grecian History? Is it when in the morning I recall the intimations of the night?

The moon is now more than half full. When I come through the village at ten o'clock this cold night, cold as in May, the heavy shadows of the elms, covering the ground with their rich tracery, impress me as if men had got so much more than they bargained for,—not only trees to stand in the air, but to checker the ground with their shadows. At night they lie along the earth. They tower, they arch, they droop over the streets like chandeliers of darkness.

With a certain wariness, but not without a slight shudder at the danger oftentimes, I perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, as a case