Part 2 (1/2)

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 d.i.c.kcissel, 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 pa.s.ses 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 fas.h.i.+on that mechanism, to construct those highly colored nectar-guides? How many centuries of acc.u.mulated 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 gra.s.s 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 wors.h.i.+per 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 alb.u.men, 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 s.h.i.+eld their instruments with their wings. It pa.s.ses and gleams of suns.h.i.+ne 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 c.u.mulus 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 ta.s.sels of the corn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”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 cl.u.s.ters of creamy white. On the gra.s.sy sh.o.r.e 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.

Ma.s.ses 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 sh.o.r.es 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 G.o.ds, and the Naiads of the sacred fount. Onward it goes, now pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”STILL THE RIVER BECKONS ONWARD” (p. 93)]

Great fluffy ma.s.ses of pink purple at the top of large-leaved stems are the blossoms of the Joe Pye Weed, and smaller cl.u.s.ters of royal purple in the gra.s.sy places are the efflorescence of the iron weed. A stretch of gra.s.sy ground, which slopes down to the river's brink, is gemmed with the thick purple cl.u.s.ters of the milkwort, which s.h.i.+nes among the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 h.o.r.ehound 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._

IX.--THE Pa.s.sING OF SUMMER