THE MOOD OF AUGUST
[Illustration]
The wild cherries are no longer garnet; they have darkened to their
harvest and hang in somber ripeness from the twig. Drowsy lie the grain
fields and slowly purpling vineyards. The robin in the apple orchard is
hardly to be seen among the red-fruited boughs from which the first
Astrakhans are dropping. Days of uncertain suns and exultant growing are
over. A languorous pause has come to the year. Even the crows, flapping
away across the windy blue, caw in a sleepy fashion, not yet hoarse with
anxiety because the huskers are hurrying the corn to cover with that
penurious vigilance which a crow finds so objectionable. The rabbits,
scampering and wary in the new clover time, sit out in the hot sun a
good deal now, like convalescent patients; they will keep this up until
the faint noons of November, storing the warmth that lets them sleep,
come winter, through many a hunting party overhead. The woodpecker
knocks with less ferocity. Stately on his favorite dead branch at the
lake's edge the blue-armored kingfisher sits to watch the ripple. Only
the grasshopper persists with tragical intensity in his futile rehearsal
for the role of humming bird. A satirical Italian compares man to the
grasshopper, but no man is capable of such devotion to baffled
aspirations. Practice in grace makes him more and more imperfect. Young
wood duck, with portentous dignity, follow their mother down the topaz
creek in single file, an attentive field class, observing the demented
lucky bugs, the red-lined lily pads of the coves, the turtles sound
asleep on the warm stones. For the wood's feathered children this is no
month of play and slumber; it will soon be autumn, and they must attempt
the long flight.
The aspect of the buckwheat fields is August's signet. From their
goldenrod borders reaches a world of happy whiteness, against sky the
color of the pickerelweed flower, waving softly, shadowed only by the
plumy clouds. The corn is out in topgallant, and if you look from a
mountain path into the planted valley, the écru tassels have hidden the
lustrous ribbon leaves. Cornfields are never silent. Always there is a
low swish, like that of little summer waves on a lake shore.
Lavender and purple thistles, brimmed with nectar, are besought by
imperious bees and the great blue-black butterfly, but already their
pale-lit ships drift, unreturning, under sealed orders, to some far
harbor in the port of spring. More silvery still, the milkweed is
adrift. Fleets of white butterflies rise and fall with the sunset
breeze, and slow, twilight moths come from under the brakes at the hour
of dew. White-flowered, the clematis and wild cucumber, the creamy
honeysuckle of the amorous fragrance, cover fence rail and stone wall,
give petals to the barren underbrush, twine fearlessly around barbed
wire, and festoon deserted barns. Healing herbs of long ago that once
were hung every fall from attic rafters--the "wild isep," or mountain
mint, and the gray-blooming boneset--stand profuse but unregarded in the
lowgrounds. We buy our magic potions now. Once they were brewed above
the back log, as occasion came. In ferny shadows glimmers the ivory
Indian pipe. The wild carrot, with delicate insistence, takes the field.
Ironweed of royal purple, maroon-shot, mingles in illogical harmony with
the blue vervain and magenta trumpet-weeds. The note makers name over
for us a score of flowers that Shakespeare meant by "long purples"; but
surely he foresaw our Northern swamps in August, on fire with those
exuberant, torchlike weeds that rise tall above the bogs and earn, by
their arresting splendor against a crimson sky, the need of immortality
in song. They bloom before the katydids begin and survive the first
frost. A few violets--a seed crop, not intended for men's gaze, and
hidden cautiously beneath the leaves, are timidly aflower. They will not
go unwed, but would crave to die obscure.
The last of the new-tasting bough apples lie in the orchard grass. The
later apple trees, like the sunning rabbit and the thought-worn crow,
wait for the harvest moon. Already the unresting twigs are preparing
their winter mail of cork and gum, which will not be unfastened by the
fiercest assaults of the sleet. Short-stemmed flowers have arisen to
clothe the sharp wheat stubble. Along the mountain road grow vagabond
peach trees, to whose fruit cling eager blue wasps, whose aromatic gum
traps many a climbing robber. Other wanderers from the tended
orchard--cruelly sour plums and rouge-cheeked pears--growing among the
cornel bushes, drop down for the field mouse and woodchuck their harvest
of the wilderness. Some of them, companioned by the faithful phlox and
sunflower, once grew in dooryards now desolate. The surpassing rose
mallow like sunrise lights the marshes.
It is not a month of growth. Fruit and grain are only expanding--weeks
ago the marvel of formation was complete. It is the time of warm,
untroubled slumber that ends with the reveille of frost.