In The Evening, Fourteen Black Swifts Rushing
Together Through The Upper Atmosphere With Shrill Cries, Sometimes Aside
And On The Tip Of One Wing, With A Whirl Descending, A Black Trail, To
The Tiled Ridge They Dwell In.
Fine weather after this.
A swooning August day, with a hot east wind, from which there is no
escape, which gives no air to the chest - you breathe and are not
satisfied with the inspiration; it does not fill; there is no life in the
killed atmosphere. It is a vacuum of heat, and yet the strong hot wind
bends the trees, and the tall firs wrestle with it as they did with
Sinis, the Pine-bender, bowed down and rebounding as if they would whirl
their cones away like a catapult. Masses of air are moving by, and yet
there is none to breathe. No escape in the shadow of hedge or wood, or in
the darkened room; darkness excludes the heat that comes with light, but
the heat of the oven-wind cannot be shut out. Some monstrous dragon of
the Chinese sky pants his fiery breath upon us, and the brown grass
stalks threaten to catch flame in the field. The grain of wheat that was
full of juice dries hard in the ears, and water is no more good for
thirst. There is not a cloud in the sky; but at night there is heavy
rain, and the flowers are beaten down. There is a thunder-wind that blows
at intervals when great clouds are visibly gathering over the hayfield.
It is almost a calm; but from time to time a breath comes, and a low
mournful cry sounds in the hollow farmhouse - the windows and doors are
open, and the men and women have gone out to make hasty help in the hay
ere the storm - a mournful cry in the hollow house, as unhappy a note as
if it were soaked February.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 59 of 394
Words from 15881 to 16206
of 105669
