The present is an inexorable rider.

January 26. 

What are heat and cold, day and night, sun, moon, and stars to us? 

 A tree seen against other trees is a mere dark mass, but against the sky it has parts, has symmetry and expression.

The thousand fine points and tops of the trees are the plumes and standards and bayonets of a host that march to victory over the earth. Trees are good for other things than boards and shingles.

It is good to break and smell the black birch twigs now.

To-day I see a few snow-fleas on the Walden road and a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.

The lichens look rather bright to-day, near the town line, in Heywood's wood by the pond. When they are bright and expanded, is it not a sign of a thaw or of rain? The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.

The present is an inexorable rider. The moment always spurs us. The spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life.

Let us trust the rider, that he knows the way. Obey the spur of the moment, else you cut off your fibrous roots.

Accumulated moments are the impetus of life. What other impulse do we wait for? Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.

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

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1852

The lichens look rather bright to-day. See January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”)

Accumulated moments are the impetus of life. See  May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant");   August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); June 6, 1857 (“We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact”)

 

Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature. See May 21, 1851 ("The existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts. ); June 22, 1851("My pulse must beat with Nature"); October 26, 1857 ("The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! “)

Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise. See August 25, 1852 ("Methinks the truly weather-wise will know themselves and find the signs of rain in their own moods."); February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings.")

Men have ever associated the verdure of hemlocks , firs , spruces , etc. with evergreen trees the moisture and coolness of mountains . Our word pine is from the Celtic " pin or pen , a rock or moun tain , " from which is derived the name of this genus in many languages . Hence the name " Apennines " ( Alpes pennines ) . 

A tree seen against other trees is a mere dark mass , but against the sky it has parts , has symmetry and ex pression . 

Whatever wit has been produced on the spur of the moment will bear to be reconsidered and reformed with phlegm . The arrow had best not be loosely shot . The most transient and passing remark must be reconsid ered by the writer , made sure and warranted , as if the earth had rested on its axle to back it , and all the nat ural forces lay behind it . 

The writer must direct his sentences as carefully and leisurely as the marksman his rifle, who shoots sitting and with a rest, with patent sights and conical balls beside. He must not merely seem to speak the truth. He must really speak it. If you foresee that a part of your essay will topple down after the lapse of time , throw it down now yourself.¹ 

The thousand fine points and tops of the trees delight me ; they are the plumes and standards and bayonets of a host that march to victory over the earth . The trees are handsome towards the heavens as well as up their boles ; they are good for other things than boards and shingles . 

Obey the spur of the moment. These accumulated it is that make the impulse and the impetus of the life of genius. These are the spongioles or rootlets by which its trunk is fed. If you neglect the moments, if you cut off your fibrous roots, what but a languishing life is to be expected ? Let the spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life. I feel the spur of the moment thrust deep into my side. 

The present is an inexorable rider. The moment always spurs either with a sharp or a blunt spur. Are my sides calloused ? Let us trust the rider, that he knows the way, that he knows when speed and effort are required. What other impulse do we wait for? Let us preserve religiously, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature. Else what are heat and cold, day and night, sun, moon, and stars to us? 

Was it not from sympathy with the present life of nature that we were born at this epoch rather than at another ? 

The truest account of heaven is the fairest, and I will accept none which disappoints expectation. It is more glorious to expect a better, than to enjoy a worse. 

My life as essentially belongs to the present as that of a willow tree in the spring. Now, now, its catkins expand, its yellow bark shines, its sap flows; now or never must you make whistles of it. Get the day to back you; let it back you and the night.

 When the thermometer is down to 20°, the streams of thought tinkle underneath like the rivers under the ice. Thought like the ocean is nearly of one temperature. Ideas, — are they the fishes of thought ?

 Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it. 

Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise. He whom the weather disappoints, disappoints himself.

Let all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ?Let all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ?Let all things give way to the impulse of expression. It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ? 

What if all the ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds of men ? If there were no physical deeps . I thank God that he made this pond deep and pure for a symbol.

The word is well naturalized or rooted that can be traced back to a Celtic original . It is like getting out stumps and fat pine roots . 

While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought bottomless.

In winter we will think brave and hardy and most native thoughts . Then the tender summer birds are flown . In few countries do they enjoy so fine a contrast of summer and winter . 

We really have four seasons , each incredible to the other . Winter cannot be mistaken for summer here.

 Though I see the boat turned up on the shore and half buried under snow , as I walk over the invisible river , summer is far away , with its rustling reeds . It only suggests the want of thrift , the carelessness , of its owner 

Nature never indulges in exclamation , never says Ah! or Alas! She is not of French descent. She is a plain writer, uses few gestures, does not add to her verbs, uses few adverbs, uses no expletives. I find that I use many words for the sake of emphasis which really add nothing to the force of my sentences, and they look relieved the moment I have cancelled these. Words by which I express my mood , my conviction , rather than the simple truth . 

Yesterday, though warm, it was clear enough for water and windows to sparkle.

 

 

Youth supplies us with colors, age with canvas.

How rare it must be that in age our life receives a new color ing ! The heavens were blue when I was young, and that is their color still.

Paint is costly.

Nevertheless  let thy report be colorless as it respects the hue of the reporter's mind; only let it have the colors of the thing reported.

I think the heavens have had but one coat of paint since I was a boy, and their blue is paled and dingy and worn off in many places.

I cannot afford to give them another coat.

Where is the man so rich that he can give the earth a second coat of green in his man hood, or the heavens a second coat of blue? Our paints are all mixed when we are young.

Methinks the skies need a new coat.

Have our eyes any blue to spare? To see some men's heavens you would not suspect they had ever been azure or celestial, but that their painter had cheated them, had taken up a handful of the dirt at their feet and painted them that color, more in har mony with their lives.

At least the color must have come out in a shower, in which they had the “ blues. ” I hear of one good thing Foster said in his sermon the other day, the subject being Nature : " 

Thank God, there is no doctrine of election with regard to Nature ! We are all admitted to her.

" To - day I see a few snow - fleas on the Walden road and a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.

It is good to break and smell the black birch twigs now.

The lichens look rather bright to-day, near the town line in Heywood's wood by the pond.When they are bright and expanded, is it not a sign of a thaw or of rain? The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge ! I could study a single piece of bark for hours. How they flourish ! I sympathize with their growth.

 

 

The woodpeckers work in Emerson's wood on the Cliff-top, the trees being partly killed by the top, and the grubs having hatched under the bark.

The woodpeckers have stripped a whole side of some trees, and in a sound red oak they have dug out a mortise-hole with squarish shoulders, as if with a chisel.

I have often seen these holes.

From these cliffs at this moment, the clouds in the west have a singular brassy color, and they are arranged in an unusual manner.

A new disposition of the clouds will make the most familiar country appear foreign, like Tartary or Arabia Felix.

About 2 o'clock P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon, there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens, but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast.

The men on the freight-train, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and I think they take me for an "employé;" and am I not? 

 The flowing clay on the east side is still richer to day.

I know of nothing so purgative of winter fumes and indigestions.

And then there is heard the harp high overhead, a new Orpheus modulating, moulding the earth and making the sands to follow its strains.

Who is not young again? 

What more wonderful than that a simple string or wire stretched between two posts, on which the breezes play, can so excite the race of man with its vibrations, producing sounds kindred with the song of bards and the most admirable works of art? Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer.

The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.

In these fresh designs there is more than the freedom of Grecian art, more than acanthus leaves.

It flows even over the snow.

The vibrations of that string will surely remind a man of all that is most glorious in his experience, will more than realize to him the stories of the Delphic Oracle, will take him captive, make him mad.

The distant is brought near to him through hearing.

He abides in the body still, his soul is not quite ravished away, but news from other spheres than he lives in reaches him.

It is evident that his life does not pass on that level.

 

 all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ? 

What if all the ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds of men ? If there were no physical deeps . I thank God that he made this pond deep and pure for a symbol.

My life as essentially belongs to the present as that of a willow tree in the spring . Now , now , its catkins expand , its yellow bark shines , its sap flows ; now or never must you make whistles of it . Get the day to back you ; let it back you and the night . 

When the thermometer is down to 20 ° , the streams of thought tinkle underneath like the rivers under the ice . Thought like the ocean is nearly of one tempera ture . Ideas , are they the fishes of thought ? 

Poetry implies the whole truth . Philosophy expresses a particle of it . 

Would you see your mind , look at the sky . Would you know your own moods , be weather - wise . He whom the weather disappoints , disappoints himself . 

Let all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ? 

What if all the ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds of men ? If there were no physical deeps . I thank God that he made this pond deep and pure for a symbol.