meteors and lightning. It is a war of positions, of silent tactics.
I mark the summer's swift decline;
The springing sward its grave-clothes weaves.[1]
Oh, could I catch the sounds remote!
Could I but tell to human ear
The strains which on the breezes float
And sing the requiem of the dying year!
Sept. 29, 1842. To-day the lark sings again down in the meadow, and the robin peeps, and the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without the intervention of winter, if Nature would let them.
Beauty is a finer utility whose end we do not see.
Oct. 7, 1842. A little girl has just brought me a purple finch or American linnet. These birds are now moving south. It reminds me of the pine and spruce, and the juniper and cedar on whose berries it feeds. It has the crimson hues of the October evenings, and its plumage still shines as if it had caught and preserved some of their tints (beams?). We know it chiefly as a traveller. It reminds me of many things I had forgotten. Many a serene evening lies snugly packed under its wing.
- ↑ Vide the Fall of the Leaf poem. [This note is written in pencil between this line and the following stanza. The poem referred to is reprinted (without these lines) in Excursions, and Poems, p. 407.]
