The most interesting fact, perhaps, at present is these few tender yellow blossoms, these half-expanded sterile aments of the willow, seen through the rain and cold, — signs of the advancing year, pledges of the sun's return.
This is the spring of the year. Birds are migrating northward to their breeding-places; the melted snows are escaping to the sea. The river has far overflowed its channel. Most buds have expanded perceptibly, - show some greenness or yellowness. Universally Nature relaxes somewhat of her rigidity, yields to the influence of heat. Each day the grass springs and is greener.
I am serene and satisfied when the birds fly and the fishes swim as in fable, for the moral is not far off; when the migration of the goose is significant and has a moral to it; when the events of the day have a mythological character, and the most trivial is symbolical.
For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle. I see distinctly the spring are thus far. It is drawn with a firm line. Every incident is a parable of the Great Teacher.
Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? Why should I hear the chattering of black-birds, why smell the skunk each year? I would fain explore the mysterious relation between myself and these things. I would at least know what these things unavoidably are, make a chart of our life, know how its shores trend, that butterflies reappear and when, know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new?
Observe all kinds of coincidences, as what kinds of birds come with what flowers.
An east wind. I hear the clock strike plainly ten or eleven P.M.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1852
These few tender yellow blossoms, these half-expanded sterile aments of the willow, seen through the rain and cold, — signs of the advancing year, pledges of the sun's return. See April 12, 1852 (" See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . this earliest, perhaps swamp, willow with its bright-yellow blossoms on one side of the ament. It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun.")
This is the spring of the year. Each day the grass springs and is greener. See April 18, 1855 ("The hillside and especially low bank-sides are now conspicuously green"); April 25, 1859 ( "I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail")
The mysterious relation between myself and these things: See May 1850 ("It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is"); November 21, 1850 ("What are these things?"); February 14, 1851 ("What are these things?"); September 7, 1851 ("We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery"); August 23, 1852 ("What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold?"); November 30, 1858 ("I want you to perceive the mystery of the bream"); November 22, 1860 ("And still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.")
The year/something new: See September 24, 1859 (A man must attend to Nature closely for many years to know know what constitutes a year, that one year is like another, to anticipate her a little); May 5, 1860 ("It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually.”) Also Walden ("To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”)
A book of seasons: See June 11, 1851 (A book, each page written in its own season, out-of-doors, in its own locality.); August 24, 1852 ("The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each day which, summed up, would be the history of the year.")
Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life ,,, why just this circle of creatures completes this world? See Walden ("Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?"). See also February 19, 1854:
Who placed us with eyes
between microscopic and
telescopic world?
What kinds of birds come with what flowers. See April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds. "); May 14, 1852 ("Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat.");See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird
An east wind. I hear the clock strike. See May 3, 1852 ("Evening.--The moon is full. . . I go along the side of Fair Haven Hill. The clock strikes distinctly, showing the wind is easterly. There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike. . . The vast, wild earth.") See also An east wind.
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| April 18, 2012 An east wind. I hear the clock strike plainly ten or eleven P.M. A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The year is a circle 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 © 2009-2024 tinyurl.com/hdt-520418 |
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