_Sept. 3_--Cloudy and wet, and wind due east; air without palpable fog,
but very heavy with moisture--welcome for a change. Forenoon, crossing
the Delaware, I noticed unusual numbers of swallows in flight, circling,
darting, graceful beyond description, close to the water. Thick, around
the bows of the ferry-boat as she lay tied in her slip, they flew; and
as we went out I watch'd beyond the pier-heads, and across the broad
stream, their swift-winding loop-ribands of motion, down close to it,
cutting and intersecting. Though I had seen swallows all my life, seem'd
as though I never before realized their peculiar beauty and character in
the landscape. (Some time ago, for an hour, in a huge old country barn,
watching these birds flying, recall'd the 22d book of the Odyssey, where
Ulysses slays the suitors, bringing things to _eclaircissement_, and
Minerva, swallow-bodied, darts up through the spaces of the hall, sits
high on a beam, looks complacently on the show of slaughter, and feels
in her element, exulting, joyous.)