Have you knowledge of the morning?

July 18.

Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside?


If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to your Creator?


Your shutters are darkened till noon! You rise with a sick headache! What birds would slumber on their perches till the sun was an hour high, and then take a dish of tea or hot coffee before they begin to sing? What kind of fowl would they be and what kind of bats and owls, -hedge sparrows or larks?


In the morning sing, as do the birds.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 18, 1851

It is a test question affecting the youth of a person, — Have you knowledge of the morning ? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity? You have then forgotten your Creator in the days of your youth! Your shutters were darkened till noon! You rose with a sick headache! In the morning sing, as do the birds. What of those birds which should slumber on their perches till the sun was an hour high ? What kind of fowl would they be and new kind of bats and owls, — hedge sparrows or larks ? then took a dish of tea or hot coffee before they began to sing?

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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 © 2009-2021