"STILL THE RIVER BECKONS ONWARD" (p. 93)
Great fluffy masses of pink purple at the top of large-leaved stems are the blossoms of the Joe Pye Weed, and smaller clusters of royal purple in the grassy places are the efflorescence of the iron weed. A stretch of grassy ground, which slopes down to the river's brink, is gemmed with the thick purple clusters of the milkwort, which shines among the grass 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 grass, 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 horehound 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 PASSING OF SUMMER
When the wild plums ripen in the thicket by the creek and the grapes are purpling in the kisses of the sun; when even the sunlight itself grows mellow and the landscape wears a dreamy haze, colored like the bloom on a plum, as if the year, too, had reached perfect ripeness; then it is mid-September and Iowa begins a season of loveliness which shall hardly be excelled anywhere on earth.
Young birds imitate the spring songs of their parents in a faint, wistful, reminiscent way, some of those hatched early in the year rising almost to full song, as in the case of the meadow larks whose music rings through the meadows and makes the balmy afternoons seem like those of early May. The wild strawberry blossoms again; the violet and some of the other spring flowers. But the signs of the passing of the summer are everywhere in evidence. Dense, white morning mists—the September mists—lie in the valleys and yield but slowly to the shafts of the rising sun. Flocks of feathered voyagers are shaping their course toward the south. Gold and crimson leaves grow more numerous along the lanes and in the woods. Antares, Altair and Vega, with the summer constellations, are passing farther towards the west, while before bedtime Fomalhaut may be seen at the mouth of the Southern Fish in the southeast and the creamy white Capella is leading up Auriga in the northeast. Between them, just over the eastern rim of the world, appear the Pleiades, their "sweet influences" in keeping with the season. The summer is passing, but not in sadness. Some of the greatest of its glories are reserved for these last days.
Now the cicada, forgetting to give his winding salute at sundown, has almost dropped out of the insect orchestra and the katydid, too, is heard less often. The rest of the screeching musicians vary the volume and the speed of their music in approximate ratio to the temperature. In the warm evening they saw and rub away at presto time as if they were determined to get to the end of the selection before the curtain goes up for the moonlight scene; but they slacken to moderato when the nights grow cooler, slower, always slower, and fainter as the chill air creeps through the woods. When the north wind filters coldly through the trees their music thins and dims till it sounds pathetic as the tick of a tall clock in a lonely house at night. But it warms up again with the sunshine next day, keeping time and tune with the varying moods of the final days of the summer. When a dreamy, hazy day is followed by a mellow night and little patches of white moonlight lie dreaming beneath the trees, the crickets have a lullaby that comes in rhythmic beats, as if they watched the moonlight breathe and rocked the world to sleep.
Comforting and soothing as the touch of a loved hand on a fevered brow come the first cooling breezes of September after the fierce white heat of August. Sweeter than music is the sound of the wind, as it passes through the woods, welcomed by millions of waving branches and dancing leaves. It brings the call of the quail, the scream of the jay, the bark of the squirrel, the crack of the hunter's gun, the first notes of the returning bluebirds, the clean, keen scent of the earth after rain, the courage and joy of life, motion, action. Seen from the top of a cliff the acres of foliage spread out in the creek valley beneath has a motion suggesting the waves of the sea, now flowing in green billows before the wind, now whipped into spray at the shore of the creek where the willows show the white sides of their leaves.
In the fields the far-flung banners of the corn take on ripening tints and begin to rustle drily in the breeze. Golden ears, wrapped in tobacco-brown silk, are pushing from tanned and purplish husks. Newly-plowed fields were made possible by the rains which started the grass growing in the stubble, changing the color from amber to emerald and wrought a miracle of verdure in the pastures which August had baked brown. Here and there the aftermath of red clover has developed a field of new blossoms,—a little lake of pink where sunshine plays with shadow and sturdy humble bees spend the days in ecstasy.
Summer puts on her last bright robes for the final floral review before she is borne by the birds down the valley to set up her court in the southland. Tall and soldierly, this last gay army of the flowers passes in review before her. Blazing stars in pink and purple, tall and picturesque, with long rows of brilliant buttons; regiments of asters in blue and white and purple; rattle-snake root with big and quaintly slashed leaves and hundreds of tassels in delicate shades of lilac, purple and white; swamp sunflowers in dazzling yellow, camped in millions along the creek bottom to make it more glorious than the historical pageant of the Field of the Cloth of Gold; plumy battalions of golden-rod, marshalled by the sun along every country lane; companies of tall, saw-leaved sunflowers with golden petals and darker disks, deployed along the fences and seen at their best in the twilight when they look like friendly faces with beaming eyes; as I write them so they march across the land and bow farewell to summer. There is no floral spectacle in all the land so fine as this march of the composites over the Iowa prairies and fields in September. That is the judgment of those who have travelled and observed. In the swamps and along the ditches the blue lobelias flourish and the companies of blue gentians are bringing up the rear to end the floral review, begging the summer to wait until they pass by.
The little creek near which I live rises in a little swale between two rolling ridges of the pasture. When it leaves the pasture only a narrow box culvert is necessary to take it across the road, but before it reaches the river, twenty miles away, a double-spanned bridge is required to carry the road over it. In the pasture where it rises it fails to furnish enough water for the cattle, but half way along its course it sometimes washes out bridges in the springtime and farther down it often floods the lowlands. Slipping silently among the feet of the long grasses in the meadows it is scarcely seen at first; but by-and-by it attains the dignity of a stream, winding through meadows and bordering orchards and grain-fields. Now the willows begin to mark its course, then elms and oaks and walnuts with little thickets of panicled dogwood and wild plum, where the wild grape and the bittersweet display their fruit and the wild duck sometimes makes her nest.
