Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, September 3, 1914

Fresh cool day. Deep blue sky, blinding white clouds intense sunshine. Oriole in morning. Heavy dew. Mists if we look sunwards. Ph – says “I’d like to make a million dollars in a year & then live the rest of my life spending it. Wouldn’t you.”

Discretion is the better way in such a remark. I said nothing.

I don’t know what I would do with it if I had it - I mean personally. To be sure, it would mean leisure to study art & nature to buy great books and hear great music. But what is life without a struggle. Who likes to have the winds blow our way. Do we always like to walk with our backs to the wind that it may help us? Nay we acquire a keener glow & buoyancy (sic) when we face directly in the gale. It does not dispirit us, but rather stimulates us. No I do not want a million dollars. A place to live & sleep, food enough to keep the body alive, with a love of art what else can one desire. Even if he does not always have these, the poet feeds & warms himself with his thoughts.

Sunset of intense warm colors - red & red purple. Just before, the blue sky yellow dappled by regular clouds. Air crystalline.

Night beautiful. Even as the color in the west is being sucked downwards, the moon booms forth low in the east with silvery reverberations, surrounded by a coppery green glow.

As it mounts high in the sky, a delicate rainbow surrounds it. A fanciful thought is that the falling dew struck by the sifting moon-dust forms the rainbow. Trees intensely black silver edged. A strong cool breeze from the south.

What I like about H - is that he speaks his inner-most thoughts freely & spontaneously. No thought is so wild or fanciful but what he tells it with an absolute confidence that it will be rightly taken.

Charles E Burchfield, September 3, 1914