Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/74

64 nothing novel about it. All the while this seemingly sleeping bronze sphynx, as motionless as the earth, was watching me with intense anxiety through those narrow slits in its eyelids. An other step, and it fluttered down the hill, close to the ground, with a wabbling motion, as if touching the ground now with the tip of one wing, now with the other, so ten rods to the water, which it skimmed close over a few rods, and then rose and soared in the air above me. Wonderful creature, which sits motionless on its eggs, on the barest, most exposed hills, with its eyes shut and its wings folded; and after the two days storm, when you think it has become a fit symbol of the rheumatism, it suddenly rises into the air, a bird, one of the most aerial, supple, and graceful of creatures, without stiffness in its wings or joints. It was a fit prelude to meeting Prometheus bound to his rock on Caucasus.

June 7, 1854 To Dugan Desert via Linnæa Hills. Linnæa abundantly out some days, say three or four.

The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness, and resounding with the hum of humble and honey-bees, are very interesting. These racemes are strewn along the path by children.

I am struck by the rank, dog-like scent of the rue budded to blossom.