Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, September 20, 1914

A sultry day.  Sky cloudless. Little breeze.  Z-ing of katydids fills the air.

Reminiscent of yesterday afternoon: A pair of crows far to the north flying low above the bluish-purple woods in the rose haze. While idly along Posts two fly low over-head and I hear the thumping pulse-like whirring roar of their wings. The first I ever heard them so, it was a revelation to me.

There is a peculiar hot haze in the air that reminds me of spider webs. The edges of trees seem tangled.

The slanting rays of the sun falling thru the corn crackles its stiff yellowed leaves.

White cabbage butterflies fill the air. The sunshine is concentrated on their wings.

White butterflies dot the hazy heat.

The other day, when the white dapply clouds obscured the sky that so strangely disappeared at night, there were visible the sun two “spots,” which are said to dim the sunshine.

Now that it is again clear, I looked for sun-spots but they were gone. Could they have been the cause of the clouds?  If so this in the eighth day of clear weather.

The heat is more oppressive than in the summer.

I can see in my mind (I am standing on the shady edge of a woods) sunlight falling in spokes thru some great oaks in early morning.  It seems like a remembrance of fairyland, as tho I had been there in a dream and this was one of its remembrances returning.

The sunset hour is come. To end of Arbor to sketch pokeweed.

The arbor is full of the sick smell of grapes which is like the taste of grape-juice.  Talk of your Arabian roses!  I can ask no rarer odor that this. Your artificial nose, may demand perfumes brought from across the seas. They mean nothing to me: I have not lived in Arabia!

The air is full of flies and fleas and bugs of all kinds which catching the level rays of the sun on their whirling wings are surrounded by a bright glow. Now they ascend hesitatingly, and again shoot in swift glides across the air, appeared like fitful snow-flurries on a cold wintry day, when the sky is partly cloudy.

Pin-point ticking of crickets.

Golden haze in the air. Calmness & peace of this season. Sunset yellow, filling the earth air and sky.

War has been occupying my thoughts at my leisure moments today.  I tried to read Thoreau but could not concentrate. What started me was seeing Stuck’s “War” and the prediction of Tolstoy concerning war. They have remained with me. Stuck’s painting is horrible - but is vital truth.

What despairs us is our utter helplessness. One can do nothing with the leaders of the war: if we could only reach the men who are fighting - to prove to them the utter falseness of their theory of patriotism!  If we must have a “something” which we must call patriotism, let it be concerned with humanity as a whole, not to this petty nation or that, that we may be patriotic to righteousness, not to race.

Charles E. Burchfield, September 20, 1914