Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/67

Rh whether their eyes are not merely rudimentary I carried him along to plowed ground where he buried himself in a minute or two.

How well-suited the lining of a bird's nest not only to the comfort of the young, but to keep the eggs from, breaking, fine elastic grass stems or root fibres, pine needles, hair, or the like. These tender and brittle things, which you can hardly carry in cotton, lie there without harm.

June 6, 1857. 8 To Lee's Cliff by river This is June, the month of grass and leaves. Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts, as if I might be too late. Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought. Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting. Our thoughts and sentiments answer to the revolutions of the seasons as two cog-wheels fit into each other. We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse, and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact. A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts, which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. I see