52 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



another swampy fallow you may confidently expect the welcome 

 of the elders or wild grape. 



I remember a certain nook which in still August nights is 

 redolent of clethra, that constant blossom of the swamp, though 

 no shrubs are there to be seen by day: a tribute from the 

 marshy pond far up the mist-hung brook, where the reedy bor- 

 ders are fringed with the densely blooming shrub, where the al- 

 mond-scented fog floods the sedgy waters, and the herons wade 

 among the grasses, half-veiled in the tinctured tide. Here, too, 

 the floating pond -weed claims its lowly plain below the mist, 

 anointing the lily-pads in its aromatic perfume as its yellow blos- 

 som-clusters dance upon the ripples. 



In another narrow glen the heavy distillation from the sloping 

 chestnut woods always seems to pour, with annihilation of all 

 subtle midnight odors. On the pasture slope above the wood 

 the cool, stimulating exhalations of the mint follow your path, and 

 linger till morn in the foggy hollows, while high up on the hill 

 one seems suddenly to leave the dews and greet a whiff which 

 brings a vision of the day -that "stratum of warm air" which 

 quickened the happy muse of Thoreau in his "Moonlight Walk" 

 "a blast which has come up from the sultry plains of noon. 

 It tells of the day, of sunny noontide hours and banks, of the 

 laborer wiping his brow, and the bee humming amid flowers. 

 It is an air in which work has been done which men have 

 breathed. It circulates about from wood-side to hill-side like a 

 dog that has lost its master, now that the sun is gone." 



Though 



"the restless day, 

 Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep," 



the night, too, hath its wary broods, that with illuminated eyes, 

 like glowing head- lights, turn darkness into day, and know the 

 teeming bird-chorus of the dawn only as a lullaby. Of such is 

 the mystic whippoorwill. How few have seen the daylight ten- 

 ement of this ominous wandering voice ! And there's the mous- 

 ing owl, on muffled wing, with fiery, flitting, curious eyes and 



