There was no time to descend the pond.  I could already hear the wind across the silence and suspense.  It was one of the supreme moments of the summer.  The very trees seemed breathless and awe-struck.  Pushing quickly to the wooded shore, I drew out the boat, turned it over, and crawled under it just as the leaves stirred with the first cool, wet breath.

There was an instant’s lull, a tremor through the ground; then the rending and crunching of the wind monster in the oaks, the shriek of the forest victim—­and the wind was gone.  The rain followed with fearful violence, the lightning sizzled and cracked among the trees, and the thunder burst just above the boat—­all holding on to finish the wind’s work.

It was soon over.  The leaves were dripping when I crept out of my shell; the afternoon sun was blinking through a million gleaming tears, and the storm was rumbling far away, behind the swamp.  A robin lighted upon a branch over me, and set off its load of drops, which rattled down on my boat’s bottom like a charge of shot.  I glided into the stream.  Down the pond where I had seen the sullen clouds was now an indescribable freshness and glory of shining hills and shining sky.  The air had been washed and was still hanging across the heavens undried.  The maple-leaves showed silver; the flock of chimney-swifts had returned, and among them, twinkling white and blue and brown, were tree-swallows and barn-swallows squeaking in their flight like new harness; a pair of night-hawks played back and forth across the water, too, awakened, probably, by the thunder, or else mistaken in the green darkness of the storm, thinking it the twilight; and the creek up and down as far as I could hear was ringing with bird-calls.

There had been a perceptible rise and quickening of the current.  It was slightly roiled and carried a floatage of broken twigs, torn leaves, with here and there a golden-green tulip-petal, like the broken wings of butterflies.

I was in no hurry now, in no disquietude.  The swamp and the storm were at my back.  Before me lay the pond, the pastures, and the roofs of a human village—­all bathed in the splendor of the year’s divinest hour.  It had not been a perfect day, but these closing hours were perfect, so perfect that they redeemed the whole, and not that day only:  they were perfect enough to have redeemed the whole of creation travailing till then in pain.

Because I turned from all this sunset glory to find out what little bird was making the very big fuss near by, and because, parting the foliage of an arrow-wood bush, I looked with exquisite pleasure into the nest of a white-eyed vireo, does it mean that I am still unborn as to soul?  For some reason it was a relief to look away from that west of vast and burning color to the delicately dotted eggs in the tiny cradle—­the same relief felt in descending from a mountain-top to the valley; in turning from the sweep of the sea to watch beach-fleas hopping over the sand; in giving over the wisdom of men for the gabble of my little boys.