11. Lifted far above all harm of fowler or impediment of mountain, wild fowl are steadily flying southward. The simple sight of them fills the imagination with pictures. They have all summer long called to each other from the reedy fens and wild oat-fields of the far north. Summer is already extinguished there.
12. Winter is following their track, and marching steadily toward us. The spent flowers, the seared leaves, the thinning tree-tops, the morning frost, have borne witness of a change on earth; and these caravans of the upper air confirm the tidings. Summer is gone; winter is coming!
13. The wind has risen to-day. It is not one of those gusty, playful winds that frolic with the trees. It is a wind high up in air, that moves steadily, with a solemn sound, as if it were the spirit of summer journeying past us; and, impatient of delay, it does not stoop to the earth, but touches the tops of the trees, with a murmuring sound, sighing a sad farewell and passing on.
14. Such days fill one with pleasant sadness. How sweet a pleasure is there in sadness! It is not sorrow; it is not despondency; it is not gloom! It is one of the moods of joy. At any rate I am very happy, and yet it is sober, and very sad happiness. It is the shadow of joy upon the soul! I can reason about these changes. I can cover over the dying leaves with imaginations as bright as their own hues; and, by Christian faith, transfigure the whole scene with a blessed vision of joyous dying and glorious resurrection.
15. But what then? Such thoughts glow like evening clouds, and not far beneath them are the evening twilights, into whose dusk they will soon melt away. And all communions, and all admirations, and all associations, celestial or terrene, come alike into a pensive sadness, that is even sweeter than our joy. It is the minor key of our thoughts.
Henry Ward Beecher.
MIDSUMMER.
I.
Around this lovely valley rise
The purple hills of Paradise.
O, softly on yon banks of haze
Her rosy face the Summer lays!
Becalmed along the azure sky,
The argosies of Cloudland lie,
Whose shores, with many a shining rift,
Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.