 | Dream life |  |
Summer.
I FEEL a great deal of pity for those honest, but
misguided people, who call their little, spruce
suburban towns, or the shaded streets of their inland
cities,—the country: and I have still more pity
for those who reckon a season at the summer resorts—
country enjoyment. Nay, my feeling is more violent
than pity; and I count it nothing less than blasphemy,
so to take the name of the country in vain.
I thank Heaven every summer's day of my life,
that my lot was humbly cast, within the hearing of
romping brooks, and beneath the shadow of oaks.
And from all the tramp, and bustle of the world, into
which fortune has led me in these latter years of my
life, I delight to steal away for days, and for weeks
woods; and to grow young again, lying upon the
brook side, and counting the white clouds that sail
along the sky, softly and tranquilly—even as holy
memories go stealing over the vault of life.
I am deeply thankful that I could never find it
in my heart, so to pervert truth, as to call the
smart villages with the tricksy shadow of their maple
avenues—the Country.
I love these in their way; and can recall pleasant
passages of thought, as I have idled through the
Sabbath-looking towns, or lounged at the inn-door
of some quiet New England village. But I love far
better to leave them behind me; and to dash boldly
out to where some out-lying farm-house sits—like a
witness—under the shelter of wooded hills, or nestles in
the lap of a noiseless valley.
In the town, small as it may be, and darkened as
it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot
forget—men. Their voice, and strife, and ambition
come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging
sign-board of the tavern, and—worst of all—in the
trim-printed “Attorney at Law.” Even the little
milliner's shop, with its meagre show of leghorns, and
its string across the window, all hung with tabs and
with cloth roses, is a sad epitome of the great and conventional
life of a city neighborhood.
I like to be rid of them all, as I am rid of them this
mid-summer's day. I like to steep my soul in a sea
of quiet, with nothing floating past me as I lie moored
to my thought, but the perfume of flowers, and soaring
birds, and shadows of clouds.
Two days since, I was sweltering in the heat of the
City, jostled by the thousand eager workers, and panting
under the shadow of the walls. But I have stolen
away; and for two hours of healthful regrowth into
the darling Past, I have been lying this blessed summer's
morning, upon the grassy bank of a stream that
babbled me to sleep in boyhood. —Dear, old
stream, unchanging, unfaltering,—with no harsher
notes now than then,—never growing old,—smiling in
your silver rustle, and calming yourself in the broad,
placid pools,—I love you, as I love a friend!
But now, that the sun has grown scalding hot,
and the waves of heat have come rocking under the
shadow of the meadow oaks, I have sought shelter in a
chamber of the old farm-house. The window-blinds
are closed; but some of them are sadly shattered, and
I have intertwined in them a few branches of the
late-blossoming, white Azalia, so that every puff of the
summer air comes to me cooled with fragrance. A
dimple or two of the sunlight still steals through my
flowery screen, and dances (as the breeze moves the
branches) upon the oaken floor of the farm-house.
Through one little gap indeed, I can see the broad
stretch of meadow, and the workmen in the field
bending and swaying to their scythes. I can see too
the glistening of the steel, as they wipe their blades;
and can just catch floating on the air, the measured,
tinkling thwack of the rifle stroke.
Here and there a lark, scared from his feeding place
in the grass, soars up, bubbling forth his melody in
globules of silvery sound, and settles upon some tall
tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying
twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow
fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from
the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on
the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree; and now
and then dashes down assassin-like, upon some home-bound,
honey-laden bee, and then, with a smack of his
bill, resumes his predatory watch.
A chicken or two lie in the sun, with a wing and
a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or
relieving their ennui from time to time, with a spasmodic
rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen
stalks about the yard with a sedate step; and with
quiet self-assurance, she utters an occasional series of
hoarse, and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an
astonished brood at her heels, is eyeing curiously, and
with earnest variations of the head, a full-fed cat, that
porch.
As I sit thus, watching through the interstices of my
leafy screen the various images of country life, I hear
distant mutterings from beyond the hills.
The sun has thrown its shadow upon the pewter
dial, two hours beyond the meridian line. Great
cream-colored heads of thunder clouds are lifting above
the sharp, clear line of the western horizon: the light
breeze dies away, and the air becomes stifling, even
under the shadow of my withered boughs in the
chamber window. The white-capped clouds roll up
nearer and nearer to the sun; and the creamy masses
below grow dark in their seams. The mutterings
that came faintly before, now spread into wide volumes
of rolling sound, that echo again, and again, from the
eastward heights.
I hear in the deep intervals, the men shouting to
their teams in the meadows; and great companies
of startled swallows are dashing in all directions around
the gray roofs of the barn.
The clouds have now well nigh reached the sun,
which seems to shine the fiercer for his coming eclipse.
The whole West, as I look from the sources of the
brook, to its lazy drift under the swamps that lie to
the South, is hung with a curtain of darkness; and
Zenith, long chains of lightning flash through it;
and the growing thunder seems like the rumble of the
pulleys.
I thrust away my azalia boughs, and fling back the
shattered blinds as the sun and the clouds meet; and
my room darkens with the coming shadows. For an
instant, the edges of the thick creamy masses of cloud
are gilded by the shrouded sun, and show gorgeous
scollops of gold, that toss upon the hem of the storm.
But the blazonry fades as the clouds mount; and the
brightening lines of the lightning dart up from the
lower skirts, and heave the billowy masses into the
middle Heaven.
The workmen are urging their oxen fast across the
meadow; and the loiterers come straggling after, with
rakes upon their shoulders. The matronly hen has
retreated to the stable door; and the brood of turkeys
stand, dressing their feathers, under the open shed.
The air freshens, and blows now from the face of the
coming clouds. I see the great elms in the plain
swaying their tops, even before the storm breeze has
reached me; and a bit of ripened grain upon a swell
of the meadow, waves and tosses like a billowy sea.
Presently, I hear the rush of the wind; and the
cherry and pear trees rustle through all their leaves;
and my paper is whisked away by the intruding blast.
There is a quiet of a moment, in which the wind
even, seems weary and faint; and nothing finds
utterance save one hoarse tree-toad, doling out his
lugubrious notes.
Now comes a blinding flash from the clouds; and a
quick, sharp clang clatters through the heavens, and
bellows loud, and long among the hills. Then,—like
great grief, spending its pent agony in tears—come the
big drops of rain:—pattering on the lawn, and on the
leaves, and most musically of all, upon the roof above
me;—not now, with the light fall of the Spring
shower, but with strong steppings—like the first proud
tread of Youth!
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