When morning broke, little wisps of mist, like curls of white smoke,
were drifting on the surface of the river as it journeyed through the
canyon of cliffs and trees, dark as the walls of night, toward the
valley where the widening sea of day was slowly changing from gray to
rosy gold. Caught in a cove where the water was still these little
wisps gathered together and crept in folds up the face of the cliff,
as if they fain would climb to the very top where the red cedars ran
like a row of battlements, twisting their stunted trunks over the
brink and hanging their dark foliage in a fringe eighty feet above the
water. But the cliff had for centuries defied all climbers, though it
gave footing here and there to a few friendly plants. At its base the
starry-rayed leaf-cup shed a heavy scent in the stillness of the moist
morning. Higher, at the entrance to a little cave, the aromatic
spikenard, with purple stems and big leaves, stood like a sentinel.
From crannies in the limestone wall the harebell hung, its last
flowers faded, but its foliage still delicately beautiful, like the
tresses of some wraith of the river, clinging to the grim old cliff,
and waiting, like Andromeda, for a Perseus. Tiny blue-green leaves of
the cliff-brake, strung on slender, shining stems, contrasted their
delicate grace with the ruggedness of the old cliff. Still higher,
where a little more moisture trickled down from the wooded ridge
above, the walking fern climbed step by step, patiently pausing to
take new footings by sending out roots from the end of each long,
pointed leaf. Near the top of the cliff, where the red cedars gave
some shade, little communities of bulb-bearing ferns and of polypody
displayed their exquisite fronds, as welcome in a world of beauty as
smiles on a mother's face. Mosses and lichens grew here and there,
staining the face of the old cliff gray, green and yellow. These tiny
ferns and mosses, each drawing the sort of sustenance it needed from
the layers of the limestone, seemed greater than the mountain of rock.
Imposing and spectacular, yet the rock was dead,--the mausoleum for
countless forms of the old life that ceased to be in ages long
forgotten. These fairy forms that sprang from it were the beginnings
of the new life, the better era, the cycle of the future, living,
breathing, almost sentient things, transforming the stubborn stone
into beauty of color and form, into faith that moves mountains and
hope that makes this hour the center of all eternity. For them the
river had been patiently working through the centuries, scoring its
channel just a little deeper, cutting down ever so little each year
the face of the cliff. Eternity stretched backward to the time when
the little stream running between the thin edges of the melting ice
sheets at the top of the high plateau first began to cut the channel
and scarp this mighty cliff; still backward through untold ages to the
time when the lowest layer of limestone in the cliff was only soft
sediment on the shore of a summer sea. Eternity stretched forward,
also, to the time when this perpendicular wall shall have been worn to
a gentle slope, clad with luxuriant verdure, and adorned, perchance,
with fairer flowers than any which earth now knows; still forward
through other untold ages to the time when all earth's fires shall
have cooled; when wind, rain, storm and flood, shall have carried even
the slope to the sea and made this planet a plain like Mars. Now is
the golden age; this hour is the center of eternity.
* * * * *
Red tints of the sunrise brightened into yellow, then followed the
white light of an August day. Now the morning mist has gone; woods,
fields and river lie silent in the hot, bright, apathetic morning.
Peace reigns over the smiling fields where Plenty pours from her
golden horn. Here, on the ridge at the top of the cliff, the woods
stretch back half a mile to meet the prairie. Straight down from the
red cedars on the brink of the rock the river softly eddies round a
huge boulder,--the remnant of some cliff tragedy countless years ago.
In the rent of the rock from which it fell a turkey-buzzard often sits
and spreads her huge wings as the boats glide by. Storms have
scalloped pockets in the softer strata; in them still hang the
phoebe's nests, which were filled with young birds in June. Here
and there a swallow's hole may be seen in the rock; earlier in the
season the young birds often peeped out from these holes as if wishing
for strength to come speedily to their wings. Across the river there
is a wide beach where the low water makes ripple-marks in the sand.
Narrow leaves of sand-bar willows fringe the shore, and back of these
are the shining leaves of the oaks. Down the river there are glimpses
of the fields,--yellow stubble where the grain has been cut, serried
ranks of the green and tan where the far-flung guidons of the
tasselled corn stretch away up the slope like a mighty army to
demolish the cloud-castles of refuge on the far horizon where the
mists fled for safety from the pursuing rays of the sun. Overhead the
oak-leaves are motionless, like the comforting, brooding wings of
Peace. It is a time for rest and quiet joy in the beauty and the
fulness of the year. Now, in the grateful shade of some friendly old
oak, is the time to "loaf and invite my soul."
[Illustration: "GRATEFUL SHADE OF SOME FRIENDLY OLD OAK" (p. 63)]
[Illustration: "FAT FROM A SUMMER'S FEEDING" (p. 63)]
* * * * *
Happy is the man who has made a companion of some fine old tree
standing near his home, type of the tree which he loved in his
boyhood, perchance the very same huge white oak. He learns to go to it
as he would to his friend, to let the old tree share his sorrows and
his joys. Others may be heedless of its charm, ignorant of its power
to help, but for him it always has a welcome and a ministry of beauty.
He learns to visit it often, to talk to it in his thoughts. Some
dreamy summer morning he muses on its history, its service to mankind.
The old tree seems to bend its branches down to listen as he says:
"I know you, old tree, and I love you. You belong to one of the first
and finest families. The remains of your ancestors have been found in
the eocene and miocene rocks, away, way north of your home at the
present time. They grew in beauty long before man's face was seen upon
the earth. The whole of civilization has rested beneath your ancestral
shade. Long before the Eternal City was founded your ancestors adorned
the seven hills and beautified the grass beneath with the flickering
shadows cast by their sunlit leaves. Some of them which gave shade to
the first habitations in the proud city that from her throne of
beauty ruled the world were still fine and flourishing centuries later
when Pliny sat beneath them in studious contemplation. Others of your
ancestors, old tree, formed the sacred grove of Dodona, where the
oracles spake to minds as yet in darkness. They were accounted fit to
compare in might and majesty with Jove himself, and some of them stood
like sturdy sentinels around his Roman temple. The civic crown which
adorned the brows of Roman heroes as a reward for great deeds done,
was made of green leaves from their branches. In the shadow of your
ancestors Pan played his pipes, Theocritus sat and listened to the
everlasting laughter of the summer sea and his shepherds and goatherds
reclined to engage in their friendly contests of song. Vergil in his
eclogues paid tribute to their beauty and grandeur. They guarded the
Druids' sacred fire and some of them are living yet which gave shelter
to the victorious legions of William the Conqueror when he crossed the
channel more than two thousand years ago. Hearts of oak made the ships
which helped a nation fight her way to the supremacy of the sea and
also the caravels which bore an intrepid discoverer across the weary
waste of waters to the threshold of the new home for all those seeking
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Some of your ancestors
made the log cabins to shelter the band of pioneers led by the pious
Hooker into the valley of the Connecticut and another preserved the
precious charter until the storm of tyranny had passed. It is your
family, old tree, which has lent itself willingly to the service of
man, in the comfort and stability of his home and in the panels and
carvings which adorn the great cathedrals he has built for the worship
of his Creator and the enrichment of his own soul."
Still the old tree listens. The heart warms toward it as memory speaks
of its companionship through the years:
"And I have watched you, old tree, in storm and in sunshine; in the
early winter when the soft snow stuck fast to your rugged old trunk
and your branches and twigs and made you a picture of purity; and in
the later winter when the fierce storms wrestled in vain with your
sinewy limbs. While the other trees of the forest were tossing hither
and thither, bent and broken by the blast, you stood in calm poise and
dignity, nodding and swaying towards me as if to show me how to
withstand adversity. And I have watched your pendulous blossoms daily
grow more beautiful among the miracles of early May when the sunshine
of the flower-spangled days made you a vision of tender green and
gold. I have seen your tiny leaves creep out of their protecting
bud-scales in the springtime, their upper surfaces touched with a pink
more lovely than that on the cheek of a child, while below they were
clothed with a silvery softness more delicately fair than the coverlid
in the cradle of a king. I have watched them develop into full-grown
leaves with lobes as rounded and finely formed as the tips of ladies'
fingers and I have noted how well the mass of your foliage has
protected your feathered friends and their naked nestlings from the
peltings of the hail, the drenchings of the rain and the scorching of
the summer sun. I have gloried in the grateful shade you gave alike to
happy children in their play and to tired parents weary and worn with
the work and the worry of the world; and it was then, old tree, that
you taught me to be sympathetic and hospitable. And I have watched
your fruit ripen and fall, to be eagerly seized by the wild folk of
the woodland and stored, some of it in the holes of your own trunk,
for use during the long winter. You taught me to be generous and they
gave me lessons in forethought and frugality. Later in the autumn I
have watched your green leaves take on a wondrous wine-red beauty, as
the splendor of a soul sometimes shines most vividly in the hour
before it is called home; and they taught me not to grieve or to
murmur because death must come to us all. In the winter I have seen
the squirrel digging beneath the snow to find the acorns he had
planted in the fall. He didn't find them all; some of them came up in
the springtime as tiny trees and spoke to me of the life that knows no
end."
* * * * *
Now a woodchuck, fat from a summer's feeding, climbs heavily to a tree
stump and seats himself to pass the morning in his favorite avocation
of doing nothing. He worked during the night or the very early
morning, for fresh dirt lay at the entrance to his hole. Evidently he
had been enlarging it for the winter. Like a Plato at his philosophies
he sits now, slowly moving his head from side to side, as if steeping
his senses in the beauty of the world around him so that all the
dreams of his long winter sleep shall be pleasant. A persistent fly, a
slap, and the woodchuck hears. He turns that dark gray, solemn looking
face, and asks mutely, reproachfully, perhaps resentfully, why his
reverie has been disturbed. Then he hastily scurries to his burrow and
he will not again appear though I sit here all day.
[Illustration: "HE TURNS THAT SOLEMN FACE" (p. 71)]
From a hole in the side of a fallen log the chipmunk peeps warily,
comes out quickly, but whisks back again in fancied fright. Soon he
returns and sits on the log awhile, barking his bird-like "chip,
chip," and flirting his tail with each note. Then he sets about
gathering the old oak leaves which were piled near the log by the
winds last March and have lain undisturbed through the summer.
Grabbing two or three in his mouth, he pushes them into his pouches
with his paws and is gone into his hole like a flash. The hole in the
log is the entrance to the long passageway which goes down
perpendicularly for three feet, and then gradually ascends, until at a
distance of eight feet it is about a foot below the surface of the
ground. Here the chipmunk will pass the cold days of winter, snugly
sleeping in his leafy bed which he is now preparing, with a store of
food nearby to use in wakeful spells of warm weather and in the lean
days next spring after he has fairly roused himself from lethargy. For
half an hour he comes and goes, carrying two or three, even four
leaves at a time. Then he comes a little farther away from the log,
suddenly looks up and sees me sitting. He stops short, breathes
quickly, his little sides tremble; I take out an old envelope and
write his description, like this:
"Size, about half way between a mouse and a rat, five or six inches
long, with a tail perhaps five inches more, about as big around as a
man's thumb, bushy, but of even size the whole length, top of head
dark gray, yellowish circles about the shining black eyes; short,
erect ears; light gray underneath, with whitish legs; a narrow
black stripe down the middle of the back, then on either side, a
stripe of reddish gray; then a stripe of black, next a stripe of
yellow, then black again and after that, reddish fox color down to the
whitish under-parts."
At length the chipmunk makes a dash for the thicket ten feet away and
his "chip, chip," rings out excitedly as he reaches the friendly
shelter.
* * * * *
The chipmunk is not the only woods creature preparing for winter
during the hottest days of August. For more than a week the flying
squirrel has been making the small mossy cup acorns rain down on the
roof of the bungalow. He begins on them when they are scarcely acorns,
merely green cups with a dot at the top. But he knows. He bites them
in two, and deftly extracts the acorn, which is in the milky state,
scarcely as large as a pea. He does it in the darkness, but with
amazing rapidity. Speeding from twig to twig, from one cluster of
acorns to another, he cuts the cups in two and extracts the meat so
fast that the pieces rain down on the roof. When he is working at top
speed, he will probably average twenty acorns a minute. In the morning
the roof of the porch is covered with pieces of the husks.
For half an hour after sunset he keeps up this fast speed. Apparently
he is getting supper after his long sleep through the day. At the end
of half an hour he begins to work more leisurely. The pieces fall on
the roof every now and then. Possibly he is taking the sweetmeats to
his hole, high up in a tree. Through the night there is the
intermittent sound of his labor. Sometimes, towards morning, he drops
in for a visit,--literally drops in, by way of the chimney and the
open fireplace. He knows no fear. Going to the kitchen, he helps
himself to the doughnut left on the table for him. If it is a whole
one, he nibbles all around it. If only half a one he carries it away.
You may close the kitchen door and catch him with your bare hands. He
will neither squeal nor bite. But he makes a poor pet, because he
sleeps in the daytime and works in the darkness. He strongly dislikes
the light. If put into a box he backs up into the darkest corner,
brings his beautiful flat tail between his four legs and up over his
nose and his eyes. Rolled up lengthwise in this ball he spends the
day; but when evening comes he is active enough. If kept for any
length of time he makes a very docile pet and will beg permission to
sleep in your pocket. But it is better to give him his freedom, and
see him scamper up one tree and "fly" to another. As he springs he
spreads out the whitish membranes along each side, holds his flat tail
rigid, quivering. Thus he goes down, parachute fashion, on an inclined
plane. Just before he gets to the tree trunk which is his objective
point, he makes momentum aid his muscles in the accomplishment of an
upward curve.
* * * * *
Crickets and katydids droned and fiddled all night, and when the
katydids quit at daybreak, other grasshoppers and cicadas were ready
to take their places in the screechy orchestra. Night and day they
shrill their ceaseless music. It is all masculine love music, as much
an expression of their tender feelings towards listening maidens, as
the old troubadour songs to fair ladies or as the exquisite song of
the rose-breasted grosbeak is to his brown-garbed spouse in May and
June. Late in July it began with the short rasps and screeches of tiny
hoppers flitting in the grass; the katydid began to tune up on the
evening of July 29. Then the long-legged conductor waved his baton and
the orchestra was off. It started moderato, but quickly increased to
an allegro, and sometimes it is almost presto. For the first two weeks
in August new fiddlers were constantly being added, and now there are
enough to fill every band stand all through the woods. The noise at
night is almost ear-splitting. The old preacher was right about it.
There are times when the grasshopper is a burden. At the hour of
sunset the cicada winds his rattle most joyously, subsiding into
silence as darkness comes and making way for the katydid.
The screechy orchestra is a poor substitute for the grand birds'
concerts of June and July. For the birds, August is a month of
silence. Except for an occasional solo, nearly all the birds are
silent, moulting and moping in the thickets. If you steal into the
thicket you may find the thrushes and the thrashers feeding on the
ground. Once in a while one of them shows himself in the morning or
the evening, but not often. Nesting done, the brown thrasher ceased
his long and brilliant solos from the treetops after the first week of
July. Next week the catbird's song was heard for the last time.
Because the first nest of the wood thrush was robbed by the blue-jays,
a second nest was built. This family was safely reared, and the wood
thrush sang until the third week in July, when one clear sunset night,
the sky all aglow with banners of golden red, he sang his farewell
solo. For seven weeks the Maryland yellow throat sang just at the turn
of the old woods road, where his mate had her nest in a low bush. As
the babies waxed large his song waned, and he was not heard during the
last week in July, nor since. Still the dickcissel, the lark sparrow
and the indigo bunting continued their trio. Evidently their babies
were somewhere over in the field nearby, a field that was corn last
year, and now is grown up thickly with smartweed. August came with a
rush of the mercury above the ninety mark, and there it has stayed. A
week of it was enough for this trio. They ceased their concert work,
but now and then the lark sparrow pipes up a feeble imitation of his
sweet notes in July. Like the song sparrow, he cannot wholly refrain
from expressing his satisfaction in being alive. Many men and women
are just like that. The vireos also ceased singing at the end of the
first week in August, but sometimes the red-eye gives a little
preachment from his leafy pulpits in the woods. Latest among the
singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of
course, the goldfinches and the cuckoos. The young chewinks left their
nests in the pasture on the third, and the chewink's feelings
expressed themselves in song for two weeks after that. He out-sang the
field sparrows, whose young were hatched August third, and left their
nest on the twelfth. Apparently the field sparrow stopped singing and
went to work providing for his family of three. But the chewink was
not to be sobered so quickly. Why not sing with the work? The days are
long enough, happy enough, for both. Even now he gives occasional
bursts of song. Evidently this is the theory of the tanager also, for
he sang all through July, and here in mid-August his trumpet tones
occasionally ring through the leafy silences of the woods. The young
wood pewees which left their nests on the eleventh are now able to
shift for themselves; but the parents have much the same song as they
had when the three eggs lay in the nest, saddled to the burr-oak
bough. Still, through the peaceful morning air comes the loud, clear,
cheery call of the Bob White--a note that has in it health and vigor
for the healing of many a tired heart. As for the cuckoo, well, his
mate is guarding those bluish-green eggs in the apology for a nest
built in the lower branches of a young black-oak; they will not be
hatched until the very last of the month. He does his best to be
cheerful and to make a joyful sound. "Kut-Kut-Kut," and
"Kow-Kow-Kow"--you may often hear the latter sound in the middle of
the night. Does he try to let his lady dear know that he is near her
through the darkness, or is he happily singing in his dreams?
Perched on a mullen spike, a goldfinch is singing to his mate, whose
nest is in a sapling not far away. His jet black wings fold over his
yellow back, shaping it into a pointed shield of gold. He is so happy
and so fond that he can not bear long to remain out of her sight. Now
he sings a tender serenade, then his joy rises to ecstasy. He takes
wings and floats up and down the imaginary waves, circling higher and
higher, his sweet notes growing more rapturous until finally they
reach their climax as he goes abruptly skyward. Then his fluttering
wings close, and he drops from a height of perhaps forty or fifty
feet, to alight again on his original perch and resume his tender
serenade, singing now in a sweet, dreamy way, sounding just like a
ripple of moonlit water looks. This love-song of the goldfinch is the
climax of the summer's bird-song. If there were none other, the summer
would be worth while.
Dreamily sitting on a bare twig, the wood pewee is content. She has
raised her family, they are now able to get their own food. Though she
is worn and wasted since the spring, and may easily be told from her
husband, because he is handsome and well-groomed, yet is she content
to sit and wait for the food to come her way. Now she circles from her
perch and returns. Watching her catch an insect on the way, I hear the
sharp snap of her bill, as if two pebbles had been smartly struck
together.
* * * * *
Fanning the air with gauzy wings, the honey bee comes for a feast on
the flowers of the figwort. Visiting every open blossom, he loads up
with the honey and departs in a line for his hive. Bye-and-bye a
humble-bee wanders along, quickly finding that another has drained the
blossoms of their sweets. He passes on undismayed; there are more
flowers. Over by the wire fence the tick-trefoil, desmodium, is in its
glory. Its lower petal stands out like a doorstep, and on it the
humble-bee alights. Two little yellow spots, bordered with deep red,
show him where lies the nectar. Here he thrusts his head, forcing open
the wing petals from the standard. Instantly the keel snaps down as if
a steel spring had been released. The bee is dusted with pollen, which
he carries with him to fertilize another flower. How did the flower
learn to fashion that mechanism, to construct those highly colored
nectar-guides? How many centuries of accumulated intelligence or
instinct,--call it what the scientists please,--are there behind that
action of the bee, thrusting his head just where those nectar-guides
are placed? Is the bee more sentient than the flower? Or, is the
flower which provided the nectar and placed the nectar-guides just at
the right place on the bright blossoms, as special allurements for the
senses of the bee, the more to be admired for its intelligence? One by
one the bee opens the flowers, which were so fresh and beautiful at
sunrise. When he goes to his nest in the grass at evening, they will
all have been drained of their nectar, and the petals will be wilted
by the sun. But they have achieved their object, the ovules have been
fertilized. Tomorrow morning there will be many bright, new blossoms,
their nectar crying to the bees, like the voice in Omar Khayyam's
tavern to those outside the door:
_"When all the temple is prepared within,
Why lags the drowsy worshiper outside?"_
Now there comes sidling, gliding along the barbed wire fence, the
Baltimore oriole, always a charming fellow because of his flaming
plumage, which has won for him the name of the golden robin
and firebird. He walks along the wire fence in a gliding,
one-leg-at-a-time fashion, as he often does on the twig of a tree. His
head is down, he is on the lookout for caterpillars. Now he reaches
the tick-trefoil, and nips out some stamens from its purple blossoms,
which he eats with relish.
* * * * *
The work of the year will soon be done. Most of the trees have
completed the growth for the year and nothing remains but to complete
the filling of the buds which already have formed for next year. Pull
down a twig of the white-oak and you find a cluster of terminal buds
at the end, marking the close of this year's growth, each of them
containing the nucleus of next year's life. In the axils of the leaves
on the elm are the little jeweled buds which will be brown and dull
all winter, but will shine like garnets when the springtime comes. The
fat, green buds on the linden are yellowing now, and next they are to
be tinted into the ruby red which is so attractive in the winter
months when contrasted with the snow.
As the sun nears the zenith the heat waves on the ridges, and across
the cornfields seem to have a rhythmic motion, as if they are
manifestations of the great throbbing pulse-beat of nature, working at
almost feverish haste to ripen her fruits and prepare for the winter
in the few weeks of summer that yet remain. And now the sunshine has a
new and deeper meaning. If we have ever complained of it, we hasten to
pray pardon. Not only in the cornfields, where the milky ears are fast
filling, but all over upland and lowland, in woods and fields and
meadows, Nature is busy making and storing starch and sugar, protein
and albumen, that the earth and all that therein is may have cause to
rejoice in the fullness of the year. Above the ground she stores it in
drupe and pome and berry, nut and nutlet and achene, and below the
ground in rootstock and rhizome, corm and tuber, pumping them full
with strokes quick and strong in these grand climacteric days of the
summer. All the water which seemed so useless in April, all the rain
which seemed so superfluous and so dreary in May and June, has been
used. Not a drop of it was wasted. Its office was to feed life, to
dissolve the substances in the rocks and the soils which the plants
needed, to be mixed with the sunshine in the manufacture of food for
the present and for the future. Nor is the heat nor the light wasted.
Both are stored in the trunks of the trees, and when in the winter the
back log sends out its steady heat and the foresticks their cheerful
blaze, the old tree will give back, measure for measure, the light and
heat it has stored through the years. Let us rejoice in the fervent
heat and the grand work of the August days. So a man works as he
approaches his ideals. Feebly at first he begins. Winds of adversity
buffet him, cold disdain would freeze his ambition, hot scorn would
shrivel his soul. Still he perseveres, striving towards his ideal,
firmly rooted in faith and his heart ever open for the beauty and the
sunshine of the world. In periods of storm and cloud, his heart, like
the sun, makes its own warmth and splendor, knowing that the season
of its strength shall come. When he seems to be growing nearer his
ideal his fervor is at August heat; for him there is no burden in the
heat of the day; tirelessly, joyously, he strives, achieves, attains.
Thus he does his share of the work of the world and adds his mite to
the heritage of its future.
* * * * *
The plants of the woodlands seem strangely unfamiliar since the
springtime. If you have not called upon them during these months that
have fled so swiftly you will almost feel the need of being introduced
to them again. Some of them, such as the Dutchman's breeches and the
bluebell, have gone, like the beautiful children who died when life
was young. Others have grown away from you, like the children you used
to know in the days gone by, so strangely altered now. The little
uvularia, whose leaves were so soft and silky in May and whose blossom
drooped so prettily, like a golden bell, is tall, and branched now,
and its leaves are stiff and papery. Its curious, triangular,
leathery pods have lifted their lids at the top and discharged
their bony seeds. The blood-root, the hepatica, and the wild ginger
are showing big and healthy leaves, but the few lady slippers, here
and there, have faded almost beyond recognition.
When the summer shower patters down among the leaves the music of the
insect orchestra ceases and the performers shield their instruments
with their wings. It passes and gleams of sunshine make jewels of the
raindrops. Then a little breeze brings the aroma of the blossoming
bergamot, wild mint, basil and catnip, filling the air with a spicy
fragrance. The insects tune up; soon the orchestra is at it again.
White cumulus clouds appear, floating lazily in the azure, reflected
by the river below. They chase the sunlight across the amber stubble
of the oat-fields and weave huge pictures which flash and fade among
the swaying tassels of the corn.
[Illustration: "IN PLACID PONDS" (p. 92)]
And oh, the color-splendor of these August days! Here at the top of
the cliff, the orange-flowered milkweed still flames in beauty,
mingled with the pink and lavender bergamot and the varied yellows of
the sunflowers and the rosin weeds. Down nearer the water's edge where
the shelves of the cliff are layered with soil, the virgin's bower
twines clusters of creamy white. On the grassy shore where the river
begins to leave the rocks the brilliant blue lobelia is breaking into
blossom, contrasted with the bright lemon yellow of the helenium.
Masses of pink light up shady places where the false dragonhead grows,
and the jewel weeds are thickly hung with pendant blossoms of orange
and pale yellow. The river winds along the low shores and reedy
shallows, sometimes partly losing itself in placid ponds, gay with the
crimson and green and blue of the dragon-flies, and fringed by dark
green reeds and rushes from which Pan might well have made his pipes
to charm the gods, and the Naiads of the sacred fount. Onward it goes,
now passing by a sloping bank which the gray-leaved golden rod has
covered with a wealth of golden glory; for this low-growing golden rod
which blossoms so early, is the most brilliantly and richly golden of
them all.
[Illustration: "STILL THE RIVER BECKONS ONWARD" (p. 93)]
Great fluffy masses of pink purple at the top of large-leaved stems
are the blossoms of the Joe Pye Weed, and smaller clusters of royal
purple in the grassy places are the efflorescence of the iron weed. A
stretch of grassy ground, which slopes down to the river's brink, is
gemmed with the thick purple clusters of the milkwort, which shines
among the grass as the early blossoms of the clover used to do when
the summer was young. Here and there the little bag-like blossoms of
the gerardia, or foxglove, are opening among the stems of the fading
grass, and the white blossoms of the marsh bellflower, the midget
member of the campanula family, are apparently as fresh and numerous
as they were in early July. Water horehound has whitish whorls of tiny
blossoms and prettily cut leaves, which are as interesting as the
flowers. And still the river beckons onward, murmuring that the quest
of the flower-lover is not yet done and that the prize awaits the
victor who presses on to the swamp around the bend where the birches
hang drooping branches over quiet, fish-full pools. The prize is worth
the extra half-mile. It is the gorgeous flower of late summer, a fit
symbol of August, the queen blossom of a queenly month, the brilliant
red lobelia, or cardinal flower. There is no flower in the year so
full of vivid color. Sometimes, but only very rarely, the purple
torches of the exquisite little fringed orchis (habenaria psychodes)
lights up a swampy place beneath the trees and sheds its delicate
fragrance as a welcome to the bees.
* * * * *
The life of an August day, like all life, comes too quickly to a
close. In the morning of a day, of a summer, or of a life, there seems
so much ahead; so many friends to help and cheer, so much beauty to
behold, so many pleasant roads to roam, so much to accomplish, and so
many treasures to gather by the way. But when the days are growing
shorter and the twilight falls, perhaps it is enough if we can feel
that we have at the best but faithful failures; perhaps enough if we
have forgotten the dust and the rocks and the mire, and have treasured
only the memories of the beauty and the music and the joy which was
ours by the way; surely enough if we can look forward happily and
peacefully to the west where
_The sky is aglow with colors untold,
With a triumph of crimson and opal and gold,
And wavering curtains woven of fire
Are hung o'er the portals of Day's desire.
The sun goes to rest in his western halls
And over the world, the twilight falls._
And then the glory fades to gray and beautiful Venus smiles at us just
over the tops of the trees. Little is heard save the occasional note
of the whip-poor-will and the constant reminder from the katydid that
it is not far to frost. But the river ripples softly around the rocks
and a cool air stirs in the trees above, exorcising all mournful
spirits. The harvest moon is rising and the white light lies sleeping,
dreaming, on trees and cliff and river. On such a night pleading Pan
wooed his coy nymph with the promise:
_And then I'll tell you tales that no one knows
Of what the trees talk in the summer nights;
When far above you hear them murmuring,
As they sway whispering to the lifting breeze._