Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner

Deep in a thicket from which the evening was slowly dissolving a thrush sang four liquid notes. Like the shape of her mouth, he thought, feeling the heat of his pain become cool with the cooling of sunset. The small stream murmured busily like a faint incantation and repeated alder shoots leaned over it Narcissus-like. The thrush, disturbed, flashed a modest streak of brown deeper into the woods, and sang again. Mosquitoes spun about him, unresisted: he seemed to get ease from their sharp irritation. Something else to think about.

I could have made up to her. I would make up to her for everything that ever hurt her, so that when she remembered things that once hurt her she'd say: Was this I? If I could just have told her! Only I couldn't seem to think of what to say. Me, that talks all the time, being stuck for words. Aimlessly he followed the stream. Soon it ran among violet shadows, among willows and he heard a louder water. Parting the willows he came upon an old millrace and a small lake calmly repeating the calm sky and the opposite dark trees. He saw fish gleaming dully upon the earth, and the buttocks of a man.