We can be glad with the spring, sad with the autumn, eager with the winter; but it is hard for us to go softly, to pause, to be still, complete, sufficient, full with the full, sufficient summer; to hang poised and expanded like the broad-winged hawk yonder far up in the wide sky. But the hawk is not still. The shadow of my oak begins to lengthen. The hour is gone even while it comes, for wavering softly down the languid air falls a yellow leaf from a slender gray birch near by. I remember, too, that on my way through the woodlot I frightened a small flock of robins from a pine; and more than a week ago the swallows were gathering upon the telegraph wires. It was springtime even yesterday; to-day there are signs of autumn everywhere. Perhaps, after all, there is no such time as summer,—no pause, no rest, no quiet in the fields, no hour of noon. Yet I get something out of the fields, these slumberous July days, that is neither of springtime nor of autumn, a ripening, mellowing, quieting something, that falls only when the leaves hang limp, when the earth warms in the shadows, when the wood-lily opens in the sun, and the whir of the cicada times the throbbing of the heat. And when that something falls, then I know it is summer. This is a late July day, but its dawn was still of the springtime. At daybreak the birds were singing, fresh and full-throated as in May; then the sun burned through the mist and the chorus ceased. Now I do not hear even the chewink and the talkative vireo. Only the fiery notes of the scarlet tanager come to me through the dry white heat of the noon, and the resonant, reverberated song of the indigo bunting, a hot, metallic, quivering song, as out of a hot and copper sky. There are nestlings still in the woods. This indigo bunting has eggs or young in the bushes up the hillside; the scarlet tanager but lately finished his nest in the tall oaks; I looked in upon some half-fledged cuckoos along the fence. But all of these are late. The year’s young are upon the wing. A few of the spring’s flowers are still opening. I noticed the bees upon some tardy raspberry blossoms; and yonder, amid the fixed shining colors of the wooded ridge, I see the top of a chestnut tree, misty and tender, with foamy white bloom. These are the last of the season. The July flowering of the chestnut always seems delayed and accidental. The season’s fruit has set, is already ripening. Spring is gone; the sun is overhead; the red wood-lily is open. To-day is summer,—noon of the year. High noon! and the hour strikes in the red wood-lily aflame in the old fields and in the low thick tangles of sweet-fern and blackberry that border the upland woods.