The axe of the wood-cutter, the measured thud of a single
threshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (with
invariable responses from other barn-yards,) and the lowing of
cattle--but most of all, or far or near, the wind--through the high
tree-tops, or through low bushes, laving one's face and hands so gently,
this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept. 2)--I will
not call it _sighing_, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery
expression, through a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift or slow,
or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off there--how
sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossing the waves,
with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and the scent
of the salt--and that vast paradox somehow with all its action and
restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest.
_Other adjuncts._--But the sun and the moon here and these times. As
never more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial, so vast,
so ardently, lovingly hot--so never a more glorious moon of nights,
especially the last three or four. The great planets too--Mars never
before so flaming bright, so flashing-large, with slight yellow tinge,
(the astronomers say--is it true?--nearer to us than any time the past
century)--and well up, lord Jupiter, (a little while since close by
the moon)--and in the west, after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, now
languid and shorn of her beams, as if from some divine excess.