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  The purple finch sings like a canary and like a robin. Huckleberry leaves here, too, are sticky, and yellow in my fingers. Pyrus arbutifolia in bloom. The low, spreading red cedars which come abruptly to naught at top suggest that they be used for posts with the stubs of branches left, as they often are . . .

  The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. He must be something superior to her, something more than natural. He must furnish equanimity. No genius will excuse him from importing the ivory which is to be his material.

  That small veronica (V. arvensis) by Mrs. Hosmer’s is the same with that on the Cliffs; there is also the smooth or V. serhyllifolia by her path at the brook. This is the fifth windy day. A May wind—a washing wind. Do we not always have after the early thunder-showers a May storm? The first windy weather which it is agreeable to walk or ride in—creating a lively din . . .

  We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copsewood dreams of a wilderness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him . . . There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music, not sung by any bird, nor vibrating any earthly harp. When you walked with a joy which knew not its own origin . . .

  Myrica, not quite. Lousewort pollen, how long? (Journal, 7:383)

  After sunset on river.

  A warm summer-like night. A bullfrog trumps once. A large devil’s-needle goes by after sundown. The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case . . .

  River still high generally over the meadows. Can sail across the Hubbard meadow. Off Staples wood-lot, hear the ah tche tche chit-i-vet of the redstart.

  Tortoises out again abundantly. Each particularly warns and sunny day brings them out on to every floating rail and stump. I count a dozen within three or four feet on a rail It is a tortoise day . . .

  5 A. M.—Walk with Blake [H.G.O. Blake], Brown [Theophilus Brown], and Rogers [Seth Rogers] to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast. Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side . . .

  P.M.—69. By boat to Ball’s Hill . . .

  River at 6 P.M. about one and two thirds inches below summer level; risen some two and a half inches since 6 A.M. . . .

  Will you join us for one hour (11 ocl to 12.) at our home this day to celebrate the marriage of our dear Anna and John

Yrs affectionately

Abby Alcott