Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/84

74 whether to venture far away or without an umbrella. I noticed the very first such cloud on the 25th of May; the dark iris of June. When you go forth to walk at 2 you see perhaps, in the southwest or west, or may be eastern horizon, a dark and threatening mass of cloud, showing itself just over the woods, its base horizontal and dark, with lighter edges where it is rolled up to the light, while all beneath is a dark skirt of falling rain. These are summer showers, come with the heat of summer.

What delicate fans are the great red-oak leaves, now just developed, so thin, and of so tender a green. They hang loosely, flaccidly down, at the mercy of the wind, like a new-born butterfly or dragon fly. A strong, cold wind would blacken and tear them now. They remind me of the frailest stuffs hung around a dry-goods shop. They have not been hardened by exposure yet, these raw and tender lungs of the tree. The white-oak leaves are especially downy and lint your clothes.

This is truly June when you begin to see brakes (dark green) fully expanded in the wood paths.

In early June, methinks, as now, we have clearer days, less haze, more or less breeze, especially after rain, and more sparkling water, than before. I look from Fair Haven Hill. As