The unclouded mind

January 17.

One day two young women — a Sunday — stopped at the door of my hut and asked for some water. I answered that I had no cold water but I would lend them a dipper. They never returned the dipper, and I had a right to suppose that they came to steal. They were a disgrace to their sex and to humanity. Pariahs of the moral world. Evil spirits that thirsted not for water but threw the dipper into the lake. Such as Dante saw. What the lake to them but liquid fire and brimstone? They will never know peace till they have re turned the dipper. In all the worlds this is decreed.

In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. 

That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer. 

What is your thought like? 

That is the hue, that the purity, and transparency, and distance from earthly taint of my inmost mind. 

For whatever we see without is a symbol of something within, and that which is farthest off is the symbol of what is deepest within. The lover of contemplation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky. 

Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.  

Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.

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

The world run to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go out to see.

"Evergreens" would be a good title for some of my things, — or " Gill-go-over-the-Ground," or " Winter- green," or " Checkerberry," or "Usnea Lichens," etc., etc. "Iter Canadense." . . . Methinks there might be a chapter, when I speak of hens in the thawy days and spring weather on the chips, called " Chickweed " or " Plantain."

It appears to me that at a very early age the mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual power becomes some thing defined and limited. He does not think expansively, as he would stretch himself in his growing days. What was flexible sap hardens into heart-wood, and there is no further change. In the season of youth, methinks, man is capable of intellectual effort and performance which surpass all rules and bounds; as the youth lays out his whole strength without fear or prudence and does not feel his limits. It is the transition from poetry to prose. The young man can run and leap; he has not learned exactly how far, he knows no limits. The grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He has no strength to waste.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 17, 1852

The necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. See 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."); January 17, 1860 ("There was a splendid sunset. The northwest sky at first was what you may call a lattice sky,. . ., in which the clouds, which were uninterrupted overhead, were broken into long bars parallel to the horizon."); see also December 31, 1851 ("I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth. ");  January 14, 1852 ("I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw."); January 26, 1852 (" Would you see your mind, look at the sky."); and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days. As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. See  July 23, 1851 ("The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth."); December 27, 1851 ("The sky is always ready to answer to our moods."); January 26, 1852 (" Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds. See December 11, 1854 ("That peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.”); December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset."); December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset?"); ; December 31, 1851 ("I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset ") January 24, 1852 ("Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown."); July 23, 1852 ("As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

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In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky before sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.

 What is your thought like?

That is the hue, that the purity, and transparency, and distance from earthly taint of my inmost mind, for whatever we see without is a symbol of something within, and that which is farthest off is the symbol of what is deepest within.

 The lover of contemplation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky.

 Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.

 The rainbow is the symbol of the triumph which succeeds to a grief that has tried us to our advantage, so that at last we can smile through our tears.

 It is the aspect with which we come out of the house of mourning.

 We have found our relief in tears.

 As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind.

 Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents ; some rarely look up at all ; their heads, like the brutes ', are directed toward earth.

 Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.

 The world run to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go out to see. . . .


Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds, for then there is wont to be a vapor more generally diffused, especially near the horizon, which, in cloudy days, is absorbed, as it were, and collected into masses ; and the vistas are clearer than the unobstructed cope of heaven. The endless variety in the forms and texture of the clouds! — some fine, some coarse grained. I saw to night overhead, stretching two thirds across the sky, what looked like the backbone, with portions of the ribs, of a fossil monster. Every form and creature is thus shadowed forth in vapor in the heavens.