THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 



of the flowers that close at noon will 

 shortly fold their petals. The morning 

 airs, which breathe so sweetly, come less 

 and less frequently as the heat increases. 

 Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments 

 of cloud have left an untarnished azure. 

 Many times the bees have returned to 

 their hives, and thus the index of the day 

 advances. It is nothing to the green- 

 finches; all their thoughts are in their 

 song-talk. The sunny moment is to them 

 all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that 

 they do not know whether it is a moment 

 or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for 

 joy, for love. And with all their motions 

 and stepping from bough to bough, they 

 are not restless ; they have so much time, 

 you see. So, too, the whitethroat in the 

 wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just 

 now peered out and partly fluttered his 

 wings as he stood to look. A butterfly 

 comes and stays on a leaf a leaf much 

 warmed by the sun and shuts his wings. 

 In a minute he opens them, shuts them 



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