Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/93

Rh every minute, or oftener, with open bill, now and then pursued by a kingbird or a blackbird, who appear merely to annoy her by dashing down at her back. Meanwhile the male is soaring quite undisturbed at a great height above, evidently not hunting, but amusing or recreating himself in the thinner and cooler air, as if pleased with his own circles like a geometer, and enjoying the sublime scene. I doubt if he has his eye fixed on any prey on the earth. He probably descends to hunt.

Got two or three handfuls of strawberries on Fair Haven. They are already drying up It is natural that the first fruit which the earth bears should emit, and be, as it were, an embodiment of, that vernal fragrance with which the air has teemed. Strawberries are its manna, found ere long where that fragrance has filled the air. Little natural beds or patches on the sides of dry hills where the fruit sometimes reddens the ground. But it soon dries up, unless there is a great deal of rain. Well, are not the juices of early fruit distilled from the air? Prunella out. The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange-yellow mingled with the light, glossy yellow of the butter cup. The green fruit of the sweet fern now. The juniper repens appears (though now dry and effete) to have blossomed recently. The