Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/367

Rh How handsome the leaves of the shrub oak, so clear and unspotted a green, so firm and enduring, glossy, uninjured by the wind, meed for mighty conquerors, lighter on the under-side, which contrast is important. It must be the cuckoo that makes that half-throttled sound at night, for I saw one while he made it this morning, as he flew from an apple-tree when I disturbed him.—Those white water-lilies, what boats! I toss one into the pan half unfolded, and it floats upright like a boat. It is beautiful when half open, and also when fully expanded.

Morton, in his &quot;Crania Americana,&quot; says, referring to Wilkinson as his authority, that vessels of porcelain of Chinese manufacture have of late been repeatedly found in the catacombs of Thebes in Egypt, some as old as the Pharaonic period, and the inscriptions on them &quot;have been read with ease by Chinese scholars, and in three instances record the following legend, &quot;The flower opens, and lo! another year.&quot; There is something sublime in the fact that some of the oldest written sentences should thus celebrate the coining in of spring. How many times have the flowers opened and a new year begun! Hardly a more cheering sentence could have come down to us. How old is spring, a phenomenon still so fresh! Do we perceive any decay in Nature? How much evidence is