5 July 1852 – 11 July 1852

I know a man who never speaks of the sexual relation but jestingly, though it is a subject to be approached only with reverence and affection. What can be the character of that man’s love? It is ever the subject of a stale jest, though his health or his dinner can be seriously considered. The glory of the world is seen only by a chaste mind. To whomsoever this fact is not an awful but beautiful mystery, there are no flowers in nature. White lilies continue to open in the house in the morning and shut in the night for five or six days, un- til their stamens have shed their pollen and they turn rusty and begin to decay, and the beauty of the flower is gone, and its vitality, so that it no longer expands with the light.

2.30 p. m.— To Beck Stow’s, thence to Saw Mill Brook, and return by Walden. Now for the shade of oaks in pastures. The wit- nesses attending court sit on the benches in the shade of the great elm. The cattle gather under the trees. The pewai is heard now in the heat of the day, and the red-eye (?). The pure white cymes (?) of the elder are very conspicuous now along the edges of meadows, contrasting with the green above and around. Yarrow is another of those flat-cymed flowers, now common. Here are holes dug by cattle in the dry fields (the Great Fields), like the buffalo wallows. In the swamp I find no blueberries ripe. But few old leaves remain on the dwarf andromeda. Woodchucks are remarkably nu- merous this year. Cirstwm arvense, Canada thistle, just begun. From the lane in front of Hawthorne’s I see dense beds of tufted vetch (Vicia cracca), for some time taking the place of the grass in the low grounds, blue inclining in spots to lilac like the lupines. This, too, was one of the flowers that Proserpine was gathering, and yellow lies, too. It is affecting to see such an abundance of blueness in the grass. It affects the eyes, this celestial color. I see it afar (from Hosmer’s) in masses on the hillsides near the meadow. So much blue, laid on with so heavy a hand! In selecting a site in the country, let a lane near your house, grass-grown, cross a sizable brook where is a watering-place. I see a pickerel in the brook showing his whitish greedy upper lips projecting over the lower. How well concealed he is! He is generally of the color of the muddy bottom or the decayed leaves and wood that compose it, and the longitudinal white stripe on his back and the transverse ones on his sides are the color of the yellowish sand here and there exposed. He heads up-stream and keeps his body perfectly motion- less, however rapid the current, chiefly by the motion of his narrow pectoral fins, though also by the waving of his other fins and tail as much as necessary, which a frog might mistake for that of weeds. Thus, concealed by his color and stillness, like a stake, he lies in wait [for] frogs or mmnows. Now a frog leaps in, and he darts forward three or four feet. Pastimaca satiwa, parsnip. How wholesome and edi- ble smells its sweet root! What is that succulent plant near Tuttle’s? Agrimonza eupatoria with a rather hand- some spike of yellow flowers. Tansy (Tanacetum vul- gare) just begins. A quail. I associate its whistle with breezy weather. Hosmer is haying, but inclined to talk as usual. I blowed on his horn at supper-time. I asked if I should do any harm if I sounded it. He said no, but I called Mrs. Hosmer back, who was on her way to the village, though I blowed it but poorly. I was surprised to find how much skill and breath it took, depending on the size of the throat. Let blow a horn, says Robin, that good fellowship may us know. Where could a man go to practice on the horn, unless he went round to the farmer’s at meal-time? I am disappointed that Hosmer, the most intelligent farmer in Concord, and perchance in Middlesex, who admits that he has property enough for his use without accumulating more, and talks of leaving off hard work, letting his farm, and spending the rest of his days easier and better, cannot yet think of any method of employ- ing himself but in work with his hands; only he would have a little less of it. Much as he is inclined to specu- lation in conversation — giving up any work to it for the time — and long-headed as he is, he talks of work- ing for a neighbor for a day now and then and taking his dollar. He “ would not like to spend his time sit- ting on the mill-dam.” He has not even planned an essentially better life. Lysimachia stricta, upright loosestrife, now well out, by Hosmer’s Pond and elsewhere, a rather handsome flower or cylindrical raceme of flowers. The Castanea vesca, with cream-colored flowers, seen from far, and the small green burs just forming. This is before the bass, methinks. It is covered with insects, now that tree flowers are scarce, — rose-bugs, a kind of locust, and I see a milk-white spider with two reddish spots; —a rather disagreeable buttery scent. I saw the other day a spider on a dwarf primrose, yellow, like the flower, and shaped like a flower. The red lily (Laliwm Philadelphicum). This has very open petals of a dark vermilion color, speckled within, and grows in rather dry places, by wood-paths, etc., and is very interesting and handsome. Sometimes the swampy vigor in such doses proves rank poison to the sensitively bred man!— as where dogwood grows. How far he has departed from the rude vigor of Nature, that he cannot assimilate and transmute her elements! The morning air may make a debauchee sick; no herb is friendly to him; all, at last, are poisons, and yet none are medicines to him, and so he dies; the air kills him.

P. M.— Down river in boat to the Holt. The small globose white flower in muddy places by river and elsewhere. The bass on Egg Rock is just ready to expand. It is perhaps the warmest day yet. We held on to the abutments under the red bridge to cool ourselves in the shade. No better place in hot weather, the river rippling away beneath you and the air rippling through beneath the abutments, if only in sympathy with the river, while the planks afford a shade, and you hear all the travel and the travellers’ talk without being seen or suspected. The bullfrog it is, methinks, that makes the dumping sound. There is gen- erally a current of air circulating over water, always, methinks, if the water runs swiftly, as if it put the air in motion. ‘There is quite a breeze here this sultry day. Commend me to the sub-pontean, the under-bridge, life.

Friday. 4 a. M.— To Cliffs. No dew; no dewy cobwebs. The sky looks mist-like, not clear blue. An aurora fading into a general saffron color. At length the redness travels over, partly from east to west, before sunrise, and there is little color in the east. The birds all unite to make the morning quire; sing rather faintly, not prolonging their strains. The crickets appear to have received a reinforcement during the sultry night. There is no name for the even- ing red corresponding to aurora. It is the blushing foam about the prow of the sun’s boat, and at eve the same in its wake. I do not often hear the bluebird now except at dawn. Methinks we have had no clear win- ter skies — no skies the color of a robin’s egg, and pure amber around—for some months. These blueberries on Fair Haven have a very innocent, ambrosia] taste, as if made of the ether itself, as they plainly are col- ored with it. I hear the chickadee’s two wiry notes. The jay’s note, resounding along a raw wood-side, sug- gests a singular wildness. I hear many scarlet tanagers, the first I have seen this season, which some might mistake for a red-eye. A hoarse, rough strain, compar- atively, but more easily caught owing to its simplicity and sameness; something like heer chip-er-way-heer chory chay. A bobolink. How handsome the leaves of the shrub oak, so clear and unspotted a green, so firm and enduring, like fame; glossy, uninjured by the wind, meed for mighty conquerors; and also lighter on the under side, which contrast is important. The wood thrush sings on a dead tree-top. There is an insect in the froth on the Vaccinium ‘vacillans. I see the cistus still. The amelanchier’s is a handsome berry, purplish when ripe, though handsomest when red, and inkish [ ? | ~next the stem. 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. Methinks I have found the Asclepias obtusijolia, which has long horns and is quite fragrant. Morton, in his ‘“‘Crania Americana,” says, referring to Wilkinson as his authority, that ‘vessels of porce- lain of Chinese manufacture have of late been repeat- edly found in the catacombs of Thebes, in Egypt,” some as old as the Pharaonic period, and the inscrip- tions on them “have been read with ease by Chinese scholars, and in three instances record the following legend: The flower opens, and lo! another year.” There is something sublime in the fact that some of the oldest written sentences should thus celebrate the coming in of spring. How many times have the flowers opened and a new year begun! Hardly a more cheer- ing 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 contained in this short and simple sentence respecting the for- mer inhabitants of this globe! It is a sentence to be inscribed on vessels of porcelain. Suggesting that so many years had gone before. An observation as fit then as now. The heat to-day (as yesterday) is furnace-like. It produces a thickness almost amounting to vapor in the near horizon. The railroad men cannot work in the Deep Cut, but have come out on to the causeway, where there is a circulation of air. They tell with a shudder of the heat reflected from the rails. Yet a breezy wind, as it were born of the heat, rustles all leaves. Those drifting piles of clouds in the north, assuming interesting forms, of unmeasured rocky moun- tains or unfathomed precipices, light-colored and even downy above, but with watery bases, portend a thunder- shower before night. Well, I can take shelter in some haven or under a bridge. It shall not spoil my after- noon. I have scarcely heard one strain from the tele- graph harp this season. Its string is rusted and slack- ened, relaxed, and now no more it encourages the walker. I miss it much. So is it with all sublunary things. Every poet’s lyre loses its tension. It cannot bear the alternate contraction and expansion of the seasons. The Lactuca elongata, four or five feet high, with its small pale-yellow flowers now closed. How intense and suffocating the heat under some sunny wood-sides where no breeze circulates! I go by Well Meadow Head. The tephrosia, which still lingers, is remarkable, perhaps, for the contrast of its light or clear purple with its cream-colored petals. The Vera- trum viride in the swamp is already turned yellow and decaying and half prostrate. Its fall is already come. I observe that the fever-bush here, as on Conantum, died down last winter. The red lily, with its torrid color and sun-freckled spots, dispensing, too, with the outer garment of a calyx, its petals so open and wide apart that you can see through it in every direction, tells of hot weather. It is a handsome bell shape, so upright, and the flower prevails over every other part. It belongs not to spring. It grows in the path by the town bound. Itis refreshing to see the surface of Fair Haven rippled with wind. The waves break here quite as on the seashore and with the like effects. This little brook makes great sands comparatively at its mouth, which the waves of the pond wash up and break upon like a sea. The Ludwigia palustris, water purslane, on mud in bottom of dry ditches. Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day. The water is remarkably warm here, especially in the shal- lows,— warm to the hand, like that which has stood long in a kettle over a fire. The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold; and this kept close on the bottom of the pond for a good many rods about the mouth of the brook, as I could feel with my feet; and when I thrust my arm down where it was only two feet deep, my arm was in the warm water of the pond, but my hand in the cold water of the brook. The clams are, if possible, more numerous here, though perhaps smaller than at the shore under the Cliffs. I could collect many bushels of them. The sandy shore just beyond this is quite yellow with the Utricularia cornuta, the small ranunculus, and the gratiola, all growing together. They make quite a show. A black snake on the sand retreats not into the bushes, but into the pond, amid the pontederia. The Rhus glabra is out. At Clematis Pond, the small arrow- head in the mud is still bleeding where cows have cropped. In some places the mud is covered with the Ilysanthes gratioloides, false pimpernel. I think it is this, the flower shaped somewhat like a skull-cap (Lian- dernia of Bigelow). The bottom of this pond, now for the most part exposed, of dark virgin mud, soft and moist, is an invigorating sight. It is alive with hun- dreds of small bullfrogs (?) at my approach, which go skipping into the water. Perhaps they were outside for coolness. It is also recently tracked by minks or musk- rats in all directions, and by birds. (I should have said that the sand washed down by the brook at Pleasant Meadow covered the muddy bottom of the pond, but where the sandy covering was thin I slumped through it into the mud. I saw there some golden or brownish- golden winged devil’s-needles, and was struck by the manner in which they held to the tops of the rushes when they alighted, — just on one side. You would perhaps confound them with the spike (?) of flowers.) The Corylus rostrata, beaked hazel, with green fruit, by Clematis Brook. The milkweeds, syrvaca chiefly, are now in full flower by the ditch just beyond and fill the air with a strong scent, — five or six feet high. The Asclepras obtusifolia has a handsome waved or curled leaf and, methinks, more fragrant flowers. By this ditch also grows the Sisym- brium amphibium, amphibious cress, of Bigelow (ap- parently Nasturtium palustre of Gray, though the pods are tipped with a conspicuous style and are not to be compared for length with the pedicels). It has the aspect and the taste of mustard. A rather high plant in water. That large galium. Can it be the cardinal- flower here in bud, a coarse plant with a leaf-like red- tipped envelope to its united stamens ? Nowadays I scare up the woodcock (?) by shaded brooks and springs in the woods. It has a carry-legs flight and goes off with a sort of whistle. As you walk now in wood-paths, your head is encompassed with a swarm of ravenous, buzzing flies. It seems almost too hot for locusts. Low hills, or even hillocks, which are stone-capped, — have rocky summits, —as that near James Baker’s, remind me of mountains, which, in fact, they are on a small scale. The brows of earth, round which the trees and bushes trail like the hair of eyebrows, outside bald places, templa, primitive places, where lichens grow. I have some of the same sensations as if I sat on the summit of the Rocky Mountains. Some low places thus give a sense of elevation. Sleeman says that no boy in India ever robs a bird’s nest. Are they heathenish in that?

Saturday. Another day, if possible still hotter than the last. We have already had three or four such, and still no rain. The soil under the sward in the yard is dusty as an ash-heap for a foot in depth, and young trees are suffering and dying. 2 p.M.— To the North River in front of Major Bar- rett’s. It is with a suffocating sensation and a slight pain in the head that I walk the Union Turnpike where the heat is reflected from the road. The leaves of the elms on the dry highways begin to roll up. I have to lift my hat to let the air cool my head. But I find a refresh- ing breeze from over the river and meadow. In the hottest day you can be comfortable in the shade on the open shore of a pond or river where a zephyr comes over the water, sensibly cooled by it; that is, if the wa- ter is deep enough to cool it. I find the white meli- lot (Melilotus leucantha), a fragrant clover, in blossom by this roadside. 1 'This should have been in next day, 10th. We turn aside by a Jarge rye-field near the old Lee place. The rye-fields are now quite yellow and ready for the sickle. Already there are many flavous colors in the landscape, much maturity of small seeds. The nodding heads of the rye make an agreeable maze to the eye. I hear now the huckleberry-bird, the red-eye, and the oven-bird. The robin, methinks, is oftener heard of late, even at noon. There are but few travel- lers abroad, on account of the oppressive heat. ‘This heat is at the same time ripening and drying up the berries. The long, narrow open intervals in the woods near the Assabet are quite dry now, in some parts yellow with the upright loosestrife. One of these meadows, a quarter of a mile long by a few rods wide, narrow and winding and bounded on all sides by maples, showing the under sides of their leaves, swamp white oaks with their glossy dark-green leaves, and birches, etc., and full of meadow-sweet just coming into bloom and cran- berry vines and a dry kind of grass, is a very attractive place to walk in. We undressed on this side, carried our clothes down in the stream a considerable distance, and finally bathed in earnest from the opposite side. The heat tempted us to prolong this Juxury, I think that I never felt the water so warm, yet it was not dis- agreeably so, though probably bathing in [it] was the less bracing and exhilarating, not so good as when you have to make haste, shivering, to get your clothes on in the wind; when ice has formed in the morning. But this is certainly the most luxurious. The river has here a sandy bottom and is for the most part quite shallow.

4.80 a4. m.— To the river. The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaree attached. So they are dispersed. The heart-leaf flower is abun- dant more than ever, but shut up at this hour. The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o’clock. The Polygonum hydropiperoides, I think it is, now in blossom in the mud by the river. Morning-glories are in perfection now, some dense masses of this vine with very red flowers, very attrac- tive and cool-looking in dry mornings. ‘They are very tender and soon defaced in a nosegay. The large orange lily with sword-shaped leaves, strayed from cul- tivation, by the roadside beyond the stone bridge. It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day, thus showing a prefer- ence for that portion of the day. P. M.— To Conantum. The wind makes it rather more comfortable to-day. That small globose white flower with glossy radical leaves is common now on the muddy shore of the river. The fishes’ nests are left high and dry, and I perceive that they are distinctly hollowed, five or six inches deep, in the sand, 7. e. below the surround- ing surface. Here are some which still contain their panful of water, but are no longer connected with the river. They have a distinct raised edge of sand about one and a half inches high and three or four wide. The lilies I have tried in water this warm- est weather have wilted the first day. Only the water can produce and sustain such flowers. Those which are left high and dry, or even in very shallow water, are wont to have a dwarfed growth. The Victoria lily is a water flower. The river is low. Now is the time for meadow walk- ing. (I am in the meadow north of Hubbard’s Bridge.) You go dry-shod now through meadows which were com- paratively impassable before, — those western reserves which you had not explored. We are thankful that the water has preserved them inviolate so long. There is a cheerful light reflected from the under sides of the ferns in the drier meadows now, and has been for some time, especially in breezy weather. It was so in June. The dusty roads and roadsides begin to show the effects of drouth. The corn rolls. The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. It probably commenced about the 9th. Its flowers are conspicuous for a tree, and a rather agreeable odor fills the air. The tree resounds with the hum of bees on the flowers. On the whole it is a rich sight. Is it not later than the chestnut? The elder is a very con- spicuous and prevalent flower now, with its large flat cymes.