December 8It snowed and rained in the night. The wind has risen and the trees are stiffly waving with a brattling sound.
The birches, seen half a mile off toward the sun, are the purest dazzling white of any tree.
We believe in beauty, but not now and here. Let it be past or to come, and a thing is at once idealized. The imagination takes cognizance of it. It becomes a deed ripe and with the bloom on it.
But what is actually present and transpiring is commonly perceived without halo or the blue enamel of intervening air. The imagination requires a long range.
Only the poet has the faculty to see present things as if also past and future, as if universally significant.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1859
We believe in beauty, but not now and here. Only the poet has the faculty to see present things as if also past and future, as if universally significant. See Walden Where I lived and what i lived for ("Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. “)
Only the poet has the faculty to see present things as if also past and future, as if universally significant. See November 9, 1851 (“Observing me still scribbling, [Channing] will say that he confines himself to the ideal. . . he leaves the facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say a little petulantly, "I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite.”)
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Dec. 8. Here is a better glaze than we have yet had, for it snowed and rained in the night. I go to Pleasant Meadow, — or rather toward the sun, for the glaze shows best so. The wind has risen and the trees are stiffly waving with a brattling sound. The birches, seen half a mile off toward the sun, are the purest dazzling white of any tree, probably because their stems are not seen at all. It is only those seen at a particular angle between us and the sun that appear thus. Day before yesterday the ice which had fallen from the twigs covered the snow beneath in oblong pieces one or two inches long, which C. well called lemon-drops.
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How is it that what is actually present and transpiring is commonly perceived by the common sense and understanding only, is bare and bald, without halo or the blue enamel of intervening air ? But let it be past or to come, and it is at once idealized. As the man dead is spiritualized, so the fact remembered is idealized. It is a deed ripe and with the bloom on it. It is not simply the understanding now, but the imagination, that takes cognizance of it.
The imagination requires a long range. It is the faculty of the poet to see present things as if, in this sense, also past and future, as if distant or universally significant. We do not know poets, heroes, and saints for our contemporaries, but we locate them in some far-off vale, and, the greater and better, the further off we [are] accustomed to consider them. We believe in spirits, we believe in beauty, but not now and here. They have their abode in the remote past or in the future.
Dec. 8. Here is a better glaze than we have yet had, for it snowed and rained in the night. I go to Pleasant Meadow, — or rather toward the sun, for the glaze shows best so. The wind has risen and the trees are stiffly waving with a brattling sound. The birches, seen half a mile off toward the sun, are the purest dazzling white of any tree, probably because their stems are not seen at all. It is only those seen at a particular angle between us and the sun that appear thus. Day before yesterday the ice which had fallen from the twigs covered the snow beneath in oblong pieces one or two inches long, which C. well called lemon-drops.
***
How is it that what is actually present and transpiring is commonly perceived by the common sense and understanding only, is bare and bald, without halo or the blue enamel of intervening air ? But let it be past or to come, and it is at once idealized. As the man dead is spiritualized, so the fact remembered is idealized. It is a deed ripe and with the bloom on it. It is not simply the understanding now, but the imagination, that takes cognizance of it.
The imagination requires a long range. It is the faculty of the poet to see present things as if, in this sense, also past and future, as if distant or universally significant. We do not know poets, heroes, and saints for our contemporaries, but we locate them in some far-off vale, and, the greater and better, the further off we [are] accustomed to consider them. We believe in spirits, we believe in beauty, but not now and here. They have their abode in the remote past or in the future.
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