The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[48] shining very strong and bright; and for more than a month it hath been exceeding dry, without any considerable fall of rain, so that the springs fail in many places, and the watercourses are dried up, which doth bring to mind very forcibly the language of Job, concerning the brooks which the drouth consumeth: ‘What time they wax warm they vanish; when it is hot they are consumed out of their place. The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing and perish.’ The herbage and grass have lost much of the brightness which they did wear in the early summer; moreover, there be fewer flowers to be seen. The fields and roads are dusty, and all things do seem to faint and wax old under the intolerable sun. Great locusts sing sharp in the hedges and bushes, and grasshoppers fly up in clouds, as it were, when one walks over the dry grass which they feed upon, and at nightfall mosquitoes are no small torment. Whenever I do look forth at noonday, at which time the air is all aglow, with a certain glimmer and dazzle like that from an hot furnace, and see the poor fly-bitten cattle whisking their tails to keep off the venomous insects, or standing in the water of the low grounds for coolness, and the panting sheep lying together under the shade of trees, I must needs call to mind the summer season of old England, the cool sea air, the soft-dropping showers, the fields so thick with grasses, and skirted with hedge-rows like green walls, the trees and shrubs all clean and moist, and the vines and creepers hanging over walls and gateways, very plenteous and beautiful to behold. Ah me! often