A Thunderstorm
That storm, during breakfast, cut off our electric supply and washed down the newly-hoed surface of the vegetable garden, offering a minia• lure warning of soil erosion. I have yet to learn how much of the newly planted seed has gone down, too. I saw one vertical fork of lightning that hissed like a whip. The immediate clap of thunder made my Corgi leap round as though a ghost had trodden on the tail that he does not possess. Throughout the storm, even when it was at its most melodramatic stunts, the thrushes were singing. Dozens of them defied the welkin, and their shouts became more and more vehement the louder the storm raged, their voices diminishing into a perspective of sound, so that one could almost see an arch, a dome of music under a sky full of bolted—thunder. The goldfish in my ornamental pond mean- while developed joie de vivre in its most acute form, dashing about the surface of the pitted water and making mouths, with little gasping noises, like tiny cherubim. Finally, when the storm had rolled past with faint rumblings like those intended to imitate it in Beethoven's Pns►ora! Symphony, I saw a damp bumble-bee resume its job. A prosy fellow, oblivious of the drama, still lingering over the world. How quiet it was when the sun came out again. I noticed for the first time that the aspens had now sufficient foliage to commence their season-long whisper- ing, a sound like those oceans that we heard in conches ; the seas painted by Claude and dreamed of by Keats.
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