A Book of the Seasons, The Great Bidens (beggarticks, bur-marigold)

 

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures 

completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

How earnestly and rapidly

each creature, each flower,

is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!

 September 13, 1852 

Here at this season

a golden blaze salutes me

from a thousand suns.

September 13, 1852

Bidens in the sun –

the flower and ornament

of the riverside. 

September 14,  1854

June 16. By and by the bidens (marigold) will stand in the river, as now the ranunculus. The summer's fervor will have sunk into it. June 16, 1852

August 20. Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. August 20, 1852

August 20. P. M. - To Great Meadows. Bidens connata (?) by pond-hole beyond Agricultural Ground; no rays yet at least. August 20, 1853

August 23.The great bidens is only partially out, by the side of the brook that comes out of Deacon Farrar's Swamp and runs under the causeway east of the Corner Bridge. The flowers are all turned toward the westering sun and are two to two and a half or more inches in diameter, like sun flowers, hieroglyphics of the seasons, only to be read by the priests of Nature. I go there as to one of autumn's favorite haunts. Most poems, like the fruits, are sweetest toward the blossom end. August 23, 1853 

August 24. Bidens chrysanthemoides, of a small size and earlier, by Turnpike, now in prime there. August 24, 1853

August 28. At Tarbell's andromeda swamp. A probable Bidens connata or small chrysanthemoides. August 28, 1856

August 30. As I went along from the Minott house to the Bidens Brook , I was quite bewildered by the beauty and variety of the asters , now in their prime there , . . . The bidens has not yet reached its greatest profusion .August 30, 1853

August 30. Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long? August 30, 1856

August 30. P. M. — Up Assabet. The river began to fall perhaps yesterday, after rising perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches. It is now about one foot higher than before the rain of the 25th. A rise of one foot only from low water gives an appearance of fullness to the stream . . .The river is fuller, with more current; a cooler wind blows; the reddish Panicum agrostoides stands cool along the banks; the great yellow flowers of the Bidens chrysanthemoides are drowned, and now I do not see to the bottom as I paddle along.  August 30, 1859

August 30. Now is the season of rank weeds, as Polygonum Careyi, tall rough goldenrod, Ambrosia elatior, primrose, erechthites (some of this seven feet high), Bidens frondosa (also five feet high). August 30, 1859

August 31.  The great Bidens chrysanthemoides , now in blossom , like a sunflower , two inches in diameter , is for the most part far under water , blossoms and all . I see its drowned flowers far beneath the surface. August 31, 1852

August 31. A To Moore's Swamp. Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one. August 31, 1853

September 1. There is no Bidens cernua, if that is it, by the Turnpike. It was apparently killed by the recent high water. September 1, 1856

September 5. What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the hibiscus, in prime, and the great bidens. September 5, 1860 

September 7.To Spencer Brook, a place for hawks. Bidens chrysanthemoides there; how long? September 7, 1857

September 9. Bidens cernua, how long? Septenber 9, 1858

September 11. Bidens cernua, or nodding burr marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays ) in Heywood Brook, i. e. beggar- tick.

Bidens connata (?), without rays, in Hubbard's Meadow . . . How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors. Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua. September 11, 1852

September 12.  In Baker's Meadow beyond Pine Hill; also the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals. September 12, 1851

• Bidens frondosa  – devil's beggarticks, devil's pitchfork
• Bidens connata – purplestem beggartick
• Bidens cernua  – nodding beggarticks, nodding bur-marigold
• Bidens chrysanthemoides (laevis) – smooth beggarticks, smooth bur-marigold, larger bur-marigold.

September 12. The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, but much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river. Omitting this, the first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds. September 12, 1859

September 13. The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn. It yellows along the brook. The earth wears different colors or liveries at different seasons. At this season, a golden blaze salutes me here from a thousand suns. How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! Nature never lost a day, nor a moment. As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons, so does time, revolve, with a rapidity inconceivable. In the moment, in the eon, time ever advances with this rapidity. Clear the track ! The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay. September 13, 1852 

September 13. The Bidens chrysanthemoides, now apparently in its prime by the river, now almost dazzles you with its great sunny disk. I feast my eyes on it annually. It grows but sparingly near the village, but those few never fail to make their appearance at last. The yellow lily's is a cool yellow in comparison, but in this is seen the concentrated heat of autumn. September 13, 1859 

September 14.  The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to the great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, especially at I. Rice’s shore, where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow — Channing says a lemon yellow — and looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). Full of the sun. It needs a name. September 14, 1854 

September 14.  Half a dozen Bidens chrysanthemoides in river, not long.  September 14, 1858 

September 15. What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed.  September 15, 1856

September 18.  On account of freshet I have seen no Bidens Beckii nor chrysanthemoides. September 18, 1856

September 19. Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside. September 19, 1851

September 19.  The small-flowering Bidens cernua (?) and the fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound. September 19, 1852

September 24 Still the great bidens blooms by the causeway side beyond the bridge. September 24, 1851

September 29. I can hardly clamber along the grape cliff now with out getting my clothes covered with desmodium ticks, — there especially the rotundifolium and paniculatum. Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes, — often piece of a saw blade with three teeth. You pause at a convenient place and spend a long time picking them off, which it took so short a time to attach. They will even cling to your hand as you go by. They cling like babes to the mother's breast, by instinct. Instead of being caught and detained ourselves by birdlime, we are compelled to catch these seeds and carry them with us.  These almost invisible nets, as it were, are spread for us, and whole coveys of desmodium and bidens seeds and burs steal transportation out of us. I have found myself often covered, as it were with an imbricated scaly coat of the brown desmodium seeds or a bristling chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, and had to spend a quarter of an hour or more picking them off at some convenient place; and so they got just what they wanted, deposited in another place. How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat!  September 29, 1856

October 2. The beggar-ticks (Bidens) now adhere to my clothes. I also find the desmodium sooner thus — as a magnet discovers the steel filings in a heap of ashes — than if I used my eyes alone. October 2, 1852

October 8.   The Bidens cernuum is quite common and fresh yet in Everett's meadow by Turnpike. October 8, 1856

October 9.  Touch-me-not, self-heal, Bidens cernua, ladies'-tresses, cerastium, dwarf tree-primrose, butter and-eggs (abundant), prenanthes, sium, silvery cinque-foil, mayweed.  October 9, 1852

October 12. The seeds of the bidens, — without florets, — or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the invention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen. How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race! By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft.  October 12, 1851

 

October 20.  Now in low grounds the different species of bidens or beggar’s-ticks adhere to your clothes. These bidents, tridents, quadridents are shot into you by myriads of unnoticed foes. October 20, 1858

October 23.  A storm of arrows these weeds have showered on me, as I went through their moats. How irksome the task to rid one's self of them! We are fain to let some adhere. Through thick and thin I wear some; hold on many days. In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and  I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. They are as thick on my clothes as the teeth of a comb.  October 23, 1853

November 9.   Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata (flat in a brook), yarrow, dandelion, autumnal dandelion, tansy, Aster undulatus, etc. A late three ribbed goldenrod, with large serratures in middle of the narrow leaves, ten or twelve rays. Potentilla argentea.   November 9, 1852.

November 23. Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common), cerastium, autumnal dandelion, dandelion, and perhaps tall buttercup, etc., the last four scarce. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc., etc. November 23, 1852

January 13. I see in low grounds numerous heads of bidens, with their seeds still. January 13, 1860

See also:

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Great Bidens

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-bidens

A Book of the Seasons: Liatris

I would make a chart of our life, 

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Liatris 

bursting into bloom

rich fiery rose-purple

like the sun rising.

September 9, 1852

Liatris novae-angliae — northern blazing star –– 

is endemic to the northeastern United States, 

and is rare and protected in most of New England. ~ GoBotany.

Native to dry, sandy, disturbed soils, 

and produces tall stems with flowers forming 

separate "buttons" alternating up the spike ~ Native Plant Trust

July 29. Peter appears to have cut all the liatris before its time.  [no.] July 29, 1853

August 1.  Liatris will apparently open in a day or two. August 1, 1856 

August 7. To Peter’s, Beck Stow’s, and Walden. Liatris. August 7, 1854

 

August 9.  At Peter's well . . . I also find one or two heads of the liatris. Perhaps I should have seen it a few days earlier, if it had not been for the mower. It has the aspect of a Canada thistle at a little distance. August 9, 1853 

August 20. The liatris now in prime purple with a bluish reflection. August 20, 1853

August 26.  The liatris is about (or nearly) in prime. August 26, 1858

September 6.  The liatris is, perhaps, a little past prime. It is a very rich purple in favorable lights and makes a great show where it grows. Any one to whom it is new will be surprised to learn that it is a wild plant. For prevalence and effect it may be put with the vernonia, and it has a general resemblance to thistles and knapweed, but is a handsomer plant than any of them.  September 6, 1859

September 9. Also by Cæsar's well, Liatris scariosa, handsome rose-purple, with the aspect of a Canada thistle at a distance, or a single vernonia. Referred to August. Ah! the beauty of the liatris bud just bursting into bloom, the rich fiery rose-purple, like that of the sun at his rising. Some call it button snakeroot. September 9, 1852

September 28.  Liatris done, apparently some time. September 28, 1858

December 23.  The now bare or empty heads of the liatris look somewhat like dusky daisies surmounted by a little button instead of a disk. The last, a stiff, round, parchment-like skin, the base on which its flowerets stood, is pierced by many little round holes just like the end of a thimble, where the cavities are worn through, and it is convex like that. It readily scales off and you can look through it. December 23, 1859

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Liatris

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

Evening Kosmos.

 August 31

Proserpinaca palustris, spear-leaved proserpinaca, mermaid-weed. (This in Hubbard's Grove on my way to Conantum.) 

A hornets' (?) nest in a rather tall huckleberry bush, the stems projecting through it, the leaves spreading over it. How these fellows avail themselves of the vegetables ! They kept arriving, the great fellows, but I never saw whence they came, but only heard the buzz just at the entrance. (With whitish abdomens.) At length, after I have stood before the nest five minutes, during which time they had taken no notice of me, two seemed to be consulting at the entrance, and then one made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint and retired. They spoke as plainly as man could have done.

 I see that the farmers have begun to top their corn. Examined my old friend the green locust ( ? ), shrilling on an alder leaf. What relation does the fall dandelion bear to the spring dandelion ? 

There is a rank scent of tansy now on some roads, disagreeable to many people from being associated in their minds with funerals, where it is sometimes put into the coffin and about the corpse. 

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. 

Galium triflorum, three-flowered cleavers, in Conant's Spring Swamp; also fever-bush there, now budded for next year. 

Tobacco-pipe (Monotropa uniflora) in Spring Swamp Path.

 I came out of the thick, dark, swampy wood as from night into day. Having forgotten the daylight, I was surprised to see how bright it was. I had light enough, methought, and here was an afternoon sun illumining all the landscape . It was a surprise to me to see how much brighter an ordinary afternoon is than the light which penetrates a thick wood. 

One of these drooping clusters of potato balls would be as good a symbol, emblem, of the year's fertility as anything, - better surely than a bunch of grapes. Fruit of the strong soil, containing potash ( ? ).The vintage is come; the olive is ripe. 

"I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;

And with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year; "

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls, - in a potato field ?  

What right has a New England poet to sing of wine, who never saw a vineyard, who obtains his liquor from the grocer, who would not dare, if he could, tell him what it is composed of. A Yankee singing in praise of wine! It is not sour grapes in this case, it is sweet grapes; the more inaccessible they are the sweeter they are. 

It seemed to me that the year had nothing so much to brag of as these potato balls. Do they not concern New-Englanders a thousand times more than all her grapes ? In Moore's new field they grow, cultivated with the bog hoe, manured with ashes and sphagnum. How they take to the virgin soil ! 

Shannon tells me that he took a piece of bog land of Augustus Hayden, cleared, turned up the stumps and roots and burned it over, making a coat of ashes six inches deep, then planted potatoes. He never put a hoe to it till he went to dig them; then between 8 o'clock A. M. and 5 P. M. he and another man dug and housed seventy - five bushels apiece !! 

Cohush now in fruit, ivory-white berries tipped now with black on stout red pedicels, - Actœa alba. Collinsonia Canadensis, horseweed  I had discovered this singular flower there new to me, and, having a botany by me, looked it out. What a surprise and disappointment, what an insult and impertinence to my curiosity and expectation, to have given me the name " horse- weed ! " 

Cohush Swamp is about twenty rods by three or four. Among rarer plants it contains the basswood, the black ( as well as white ) ash, the fever - bus, the cohush, the collinsonia, not to mention sassafras, poison sumach, ivy, agrimony, Arum triphyllum, ( sweet viburnum ( ? ) in hedges near by ), ground - nut, touch-me- not ( as high as your head ), and Eupatorium purpureum ( eight feet, eight inches high, with a large convex corymb ( hemi-spherical ) of many stories, fourteen inches wide; width of plant from tip of leaf to tip of leaf two feet, diameter of stalk one inch at ground, leaves seven in a whorl ). 

Rare plants seem to love certain localities. As if the original Conant had been a botanist and endeavored to form an arboretum. A natural arboretum ? The handsome sweet viburnum berries, now red on one cheek. It was the filiform crowfoot ( Ranunculus filiformis ) that I saw by the riverside the other day and to - day. The season advances apace.

 The flowers of the nettle-leaved vervain are now near the ends of the spike, like the blue. Utricularia inflata, whorled bladderwort, floating on the water at same place. Gentiana Saponaria budded. Gerardia flava at Conant's Grove. 

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff, when, looking up from my botanizing ( I had been examining the Ranunculus filiformis, the Sium latifolium ( ?? ), and the obtuse galium on the muddy shore), I saw the seal of evening on the river. There was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour which my senses were prepared to appreciate. The sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and pads even more than before. His rays then fell at right angles on their stems. 

I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged and covered with weedy moss (utricularia roots? ) Sometimes their tops are submerged. The cardinal-flowers standing by me. The trivialness of the day is past. The greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.) 

The coolness of evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste  (chaste eve); even as I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought. After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life. 

The evening air is such a bath for both mind and body. When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has been all trivial, - as well field and wood as highway, - then at eve the sun goes down westward, and the wind goes down with it, and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day. 

I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty. Thus, long after feeding, the diviner faculties begin to be fed, to feel their oats, their nutriment, and are not oppressed by the belly's load. It is abstinence from loading the belly anew until the brain and divine faculties have felt their vigor. Not till some hours does my food invigorate my brain, - ascendeth into the brain. We practice at this hour an involuntary abstinence. We are comparatively chaste and temperate as Eve herself; the nutriment is just reaching the brain.

 Every sound is music now. The grating of some distant boat which a man is launching on the rocky bottom, though here is no man nor inhabited house, nor even cultivated field, in sight, this is heard with such distinctness that I listen with pleasure as if it was [ sic ] music.

 The attractive point is that line where the water meets the land, not distinct, but known to exist. The willows are not the less interesting because of their nakedness below. How rich, like what we love to read of South American primitive forest, is the scenery of this river! What luxuriance of weeds, what depth of mud along its sides! These old antehistoric, geologic  ante-diluvian rocks, which only primitive wading birds, still lingering among us, are worthy to tread. 

The season which we seem to live in anticipation of is arrived. The water, indeed, reflects heaven because my mind does; such is its own serenity, its transparency and stillness. With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from me and feel my fresh vigor, who have been bathing in the same tub which the muskrat uses! Such a medicated bath as only nature furnishes. A fish leaps, and the dimple he makes is observed now. How ample and generous was nature! My inheritance is not narrow. Here is no other this evening. 

Those resorts which I most love and frequent, numerous and vast as they are, are as it were given up to me, as much as if I were an autocrat or owner of the world, and by my edicts excluded men from my territories. Perchance there is some advantage here not enjoyed in older countries. 

There are said to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet I find such ample space and verge, even miles of walking every day in which I do not meet nor see a human being, and often not very recent traces of them . So much of man as there is in your mind, there will be in your eye . Methinks that for a great part of the time, as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing the advantages of human culture, fresh from society of men, but turned loose into the woods, the only man in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent as if man and his customs and institutions were not . 

The catbird, or the jay, is sure of the whole of your ear now. Each noise is like a stain on pure glass. The rivers now, these great blue subterranean heavens, reflecting the supernal skies and red-tinted cloud. 

A fly (or gnat ?) will often buzz round you and persecute you like an imp. How much of imp-like, pestering character they express ! ( I hear a boy driving home his cows . ) 

What unanimity between the water and the sky! - one only a little denser element than the other. The grossest part of heaven. Think of a mirror on so large a scale ! 

Standing on distant hills, you see the heavens reflected, the evening sky, in some low lake or river in the valley, as perfectly as in any mirror they could be. Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with earth?

 We commonly sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred hour. Our customs turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time, as at the meeting of two roads, one coming from the noon, the other leading to the night. It might be [well] if our repasts were taken out-of-doors, in view of the sunset and the rising stars;

• if there were two persons whose pulses beat together, 
• if men cared for the κόσμος, or beauty of the world; 
• if men were social in a high and rare sense; 
• if they associated on high levels;
• if we took in with our tea a draught of the transparent, dew-freighted evening air;
• if, with our bread and butter, we took a slice of the red western sky;
• if the smoking, steaming urn were the vapor on a thousand lakes and rivers and meads. 

The air of the valleys at this hour is the distilled essence of all those fragrances which during the day have been filling and have been dispersed in the atmosphere. The fine fragrances, perchance, which have floated in the upper atmospheres have settled to these low vales ! 

I talked of buying Conantum once, but for want of money we did not come to terms. But I have farmed it in my own fashion every year since.

 I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves with them. There may be a few Kalmias. But it must be done very sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his love. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1851

One made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint. See August 7, 1854 ("A wasp stung me at one high blueberry bush on the forefinger of my left hand, just above the second joint. It was very venomous;. . . and the finger soon swelled much below the joint, so that I could not completely close the finger,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

There is a rank scent of tansy now.  See August 9, 1851 ("Tansy now in bloom and the fresh white clethra")

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls. See July 28, 1860 ("A man shows me in the street a single bunch of potato-balls . . . to some extent emulating a cluster of grapes. The very sight of them supplies my constitution with all needed potash.")

The κόσμος, or beauty of the world. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek epithet applied to the world, — name for the world, — - Kosmos, or beauty"); January 5, 1856 ("Order, κóσμos.")

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. See September 1, 1853 ("Johnswort, the large and common, is about done.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The pensive eve. See August 31, 1852 ("Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.")

I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants . . . no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers. See June 13, 1852 ("But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York. . .If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. . . .Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers.")

A meteorological journal of the mind.

 

The poet must be

continually watching

the moods of his mind.

Henry Thoreau, Auguat 19, 1851

I’ve heard within my inmost soul

Such cheerful morning news,

In the horizon of my mind

A Week, ("The Inward Morning")

July 23, 1851.  The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth.   

August 17, 1851 I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. 

August 17, 1851   Ah ! if I could so live that . . . when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also!  that I could match nature always with my moods!  that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish!

 August 18, 1851 It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness. 

August 19, 1851. The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind . . . What might we not expect from a long life faithfully spent in this wise? . . . A faithful description . . . of the thoughts which visited a certain mind in threescore years and ten . . . A meteorological journal of the mind.

August 28, 1851 The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods.  An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

August 30, 1851  I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.

A cold afternoon

windy with some snow not yet

melted on the ground.

My eye wanders as

I sit on an oak stump by

an old cellar-hole.

Methinks that in my 

mood I am asking Nature 

to give me a sign.

Transient gladness.

I do not know what it is –

something that I see.

This recognition

from white pines now reflecting

a silvery light.

Where is my home? 

It is as indistinct as 

an old cellar-hole. 

And  by the old site

I sit on the stump of an

oak which once grew here.

November 30, 1851

December 27, 1851  The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset . . . The sky is always ready to answer to our moods.

January 17, 1852.  As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. 

January 26, 1852.  Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.

February 3, 1852 .  The sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few moods; nor is the evening the less serene for them.

March 5, 1852.  Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens.  . . . The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk. 

May 9, 1852. Our moods vary from week to week, with the winds and the temperature and the revolution of the seasons.  It is impossible to remember a week ago. A river of Lethe flows with many windings the year through, separating one season from another.

June 25, 1852.  There is a flower for every mood of the mind.

August 25. 1852. At length, before sundown, it begins to rain . . . and now, after dark, the sound of it dripping and pattering without is quite cheering. It is long since I heard it . . . something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind.

March 22, 1853  I am waked by my genius, surprised to find myself expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood.

March 31, 1853    It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.  

Distant mountain top

as blue to the memory

as now to the eyes.

March 31, 1853

May 17, 1853 I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing . . . It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been.

May 23, 1853   Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind. 

June 14, 1853  This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home . . . you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then the dews begin to descend in your mind, and its atmosphere is strained of all impurities; and home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you. There is a coolness in your mind as in a well. 

August 7, 1853.  [The poet] sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought . . . The objects I behold correspond to my mood.

July 31, 1856.  I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.

Thoughts of autumn and

the memory of past years

occupy my mind.

July 31, 1856

 August 18, 1856 I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound . . . It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy.

September 2, 1856 It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood.

June 6, 1857. A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.

October 26, 1857. The seasons and all their changes are in me  . . .  After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. 

November 2, 1857.  It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. I am aware often that I have been occupied with shallow and commonplace thoughts, looking for something superficial, when I did not see the most glorious reflections, though exactly in the line of my vision. 

November 18, 1857.  You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

January 23, 1858.  It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.

August 26, 1858 Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours.

November 17, 1858.  Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons.

August 20, 1858 The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. 

December 25, 1858.  How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.

 April 24, 1859.  The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s.

 September 24, 1859.  I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sportsman knows when to look for plover.

January 18, 1860,   They are very different seasons in the winter when the ice of the river and meadows and ponds is bare, — blue or green, a vast glittering crystal, — and when it is all covered with snow or slosh; and our moods correspond.

February 18, 1860  Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.

 September 18, 1860  If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

Each experience

reduces itself to a mood

of the mind. 

June 6, 1857  

;