MAY 



29 



He is so harmless to man, that, were it not for 

 the old, unreasoning antipathy, our hands would 

 not be raised against him ; and, if he were not a 

 snake, we should call him beautiful in his stripes 

 of black and gold, and in graceful motion a mo- 

 tion that charms us in the undulation of waves, 

 in their nickering reflections of sunlight on rushy 

 margins and wooded shores, in the winding of a 

 brook through a meadow, in the flutter of a pen- 

 nant and the flaunting of a banner, the ripple of 

 wind-swept meadow and grain field, and the sway 

 of leafy boughs. 



ROBINSON: In New England Fields and Woods. 



30 



A serene evening, the sun going down behind 

 clouds. A few white or slightly shaded piles of 

 clouds floating in the eastern sky, but a broad, 

 clear, mellow cope left for the moon to rise into. 

 An evening for poets to describe. As I proceed 

 along the back road I hear the lark still singing 

 in the meadow, and the bobolink, the golden robin 

 on the elms, and the swallows twittering about the 

 barns. All Nature is in an expectant attitude. 



THOREAU: Summer. 



All that was ripest and fairest in the wilderness 

 and the wild man is preserved and transmitted to 

 us in the strain of the wood thrush. 



THOKEAU: Summer. 



