Charles Burchfield, Journals, March 14, 1915

 A fine day.  A silver haze on the air blending all things in a bluish harmony.  Midmorning to Park sketching.  Sketching sunhazed willows; on all sides white-faced trees worshipping the sun; sticky sound of melting frost in ground; then robins commencing to call!  One sang from a remote distance.  Always it is so; we never hear the first song clearly – as if the dense frost-haze drowned the notes to Burroughs the robin’s song suggested boyhood.  To me it is the one of few sounds that most suggest my boyhood; and this of spring rains or wood-wanderings.  From a tree came the liquid “squeak” of a blackbird and as I looked at the southern sky till my eyes dimmed he flew over-head.  Faintly once the quavering call of a bluebird.  Doan Brook a maze of sun-glittering rapids brighter than the sun; the new museum looms against the sky in a bright lemon splotch black patterned with trees; a thin line of gold marks the falls, beyond them sun-hazed willows; a melted patch of ground near a clump of green cottonwoods, reflects and deepens the blue of the sky; as I sketch the sound of the falls thrills me (what matter, to a starved mind, if they are artificial?); once I heard a woodpecker, The sun is warm even thru, the clothing.

 As the day progressed the haze disappeared and the sunlight fairly sang so brilliant was it.  I saw a robin under my window.

On Euclid avenue I saw an Italian ball conman his bright) blue shirt (that they love so much) contrasting finely with his startling red orange yellow and emerald balloons.  He seemed closer akin to spring birds than most people.  Peddlers, hurdy gurdy men + scissors grinders to our minds mean poetry, living a poetic life.

 At 5 P.M. To R.M’s.  ON the way.  At late afternoon on days like this when the whole earth is looking yellow faced towards the sun, there seems a sense of eternity in things, as if the day would stay thus forever, and I always think of romantic wanderings over endless roads yellowed by a level sun, wanderings that themselves have no aim or end.  I seemed to hear robin warblings on all sides yet I listened carefully I heard naught; as the subtle flop of a fish in a summer night’s starred creek becomes a stream murmur; I saw a robin in the sun gilded branches of a maple, burning against the blue sky, giving his call into the sunlight.

All noises now suggest spring – the shouts of boys the banging of streetcars, - they are colored by the sun.

A mourning cloak butterfly dancing the air in the morning – the frost taking wings.

Charles E. Burchfield,   March 14, 1915.