The earth is a vast
saucer sloping upward to
its sharp mountain rim.
Sunshine now seen far
away looks like the yellow
grass in the meadows.
The sun comes out bright
and shines on Fair Haven Pond,
rippled by the wind.
There is a flower
for every mood of the mind –
wild roses in bloom.
June 25, 1852
Why the firefly's light,
if it were not for darkness?
One implies the other.
June 25, 1852
You see one here and
another there as if it
were one in motion.
June 25, 1852
Just as the sun rises this morning, under clouds, I see a rainbow in the west horizon, the lower parts quite bright.
A few moments after, it rains heavily for a half-hour; and it continues cloudy as well as cool most of the day.
I observe that young birds are usually of a duller color and more speckled than old ones, as if for their protection in their tender state. They have not yet the markings (and the beauty) which distinguish their species, and which betray it often, but by their colors are merged in the variety of colors of the season.
To Cliffs, 4 P.M.
It is cool and cloudy weather in which the crickets, still heard, remind you of the fall, -a clearer ring to their creak. . . .
Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent.
The Convolvulus sepium, bindweed; morning- glory is the best name. It always refreshes me to see it. Some saw it the 19th. In the morning and cloudy weather, says Gray. I associate it with holiest morning hours. It may preside over my morning walks and thoughts.
There is a flower for every mood of the mind.
Methinks roses oftenest display their high colors, colors which invariably attract all eyes and betray them, against a dark ground, as the dark green or the shady recesses of the bushes and copses, where they show to best advantage. Their enemies do not spare the open flower for an hour. Hence, if for no other reason, their buds are most beautiful. Their promise of perfect and dazzling beauty, when their buds are just beginning to expand, — beauty which they can hardly contain, — as in most youths, commonly surpasses the fulfillment of their expanded flowers. The color shows fairest and brightest in the bud. The expanded flower has no higher or deeper tint than the swelling bud exposed. This raised a dangerous expectation.
Methinks roses oftenest display their high colors, colors which invariably attract all eyes and betray them, against a dark ground, as the dark green or the shady recesses of the bushes and copses, where they show to best advantage. Their enemies do not spare the open flower for an hour. Hence, if for no other reason, their buds are most beautiful. Their promise of perfect and dazzling beauty, when their buds are just beginning to expand, — beauty which they can hardly contain, — as in most youths, commonly surpasses the fulfillment of their expanded flowers. The color shows fairest and brightest in the bud. The expanded flower has no higher or deeper tint than the swelling bud exposed. This raised a dangerous expectation.
The season when wild roses are in bloom should have some preeminence, methinks.
Agreeable is this cool cloudy weather, favorable to thought, after the sultry days.
The air is clear, as if a cool, dewy brush had swept the vales and meadows of all haze. A liquid coolness invests them, as if their midnight aspect were suddenly revealed to midday.
The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears more than usually scooped out, like a vast saucer sloping up ward to its sharp mountain rim. The mountains are washed in air.
The sunshine, now seen far away on fields and hills in the northwest, looks cool and whole some, like the yellow grass in the meadows.
I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete.
The sun now comes out bright, though westering, and shines on Fair Haven, rippled by the wind.
8.30 p. m. — To Conantum.
Moon half full. Fields dusky; the evening star and one other bright one near the moon. It is a cool but pretty still night.
Methinks I am less thoughtful than I was last year at this time. The flute I now hear from the Depot Field does not find such caverns to echo and resound in in my mind, — no such answering depths. Our minds should echo at least as many times as a Mammoth Cave to every musical sound. It should awaken reflections in us.
I hear not many crickets.
Agreeable is this cool cloudy weather, favorable to thought, after the sultry days.
The air is clear, as if a cool, dewy brush had swept the vales and meadows of all haze. A liquid coolness invests them, as if their midnight aspect were suddenly revealed to midday.
The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears more than usually scooped out, like a vast saucer sloping up ward to its sharp mountain rim. The mountains are washed in air.
The sunshine, now seen far away on fields and hills in the northwest, looks cool and whole some, like the yellow grass in the meadows.
I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete.
The sun now comes out bright, though westering, and shines on Fair Haven, rippled by the wind.
8.30 p. m. — To Conantum.
Moon half full. Fields dusky; the evening star and one other bright one near the moon. It is a cool but pretty still night.
Methinks I am less thoughtful than I was last year at this time. The flute I now hear from the Depot Field does not find such caverns to echo and resound in in my mind, — no such answering depths. Our minds should echo at least as many times as a Mammoth Cave to every musical sound. It should awaken reflections in us.
I hear not many crickets.
Some children calling their kitten home by some endearing name.
Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour.
Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! Some drink and gamble. He plays some well-known march. But the music is not in the tune; it is in the sound. It does not proceed from the trading nor political world. He practices this ancient art.
There are light, vaporous clouds overhead; dark, fuscous ones in the north. The trees are turned black. As candles are lit on earth, stars are lit in the heavens. I hear the bullfrog's trump from afar.
Now I turn down the Corner road. At this quiet hour the evening wind is heard to moan in the hollows of your face, mysterious, spirit-like, conversing with you. It can be heard now only. The whip-poor-will sings.
Now I turn down the Corner road. At this quiet hour the evening wind is heard to moan in the hollows of your face, mysterious, spirit-like, conversing with you. It can be heard now only. The whip-poor-will sings.
I hear a laborer going home, coarsely singing to himself. Though he has scarcely had a thought all day, killing weeds, at this hour he sings or talks to himself. His humble, earthy contentment gets expression. It is kindred in its origin with the notes or music of many creatures. A more fit and natural expression of his mood, this humming, than conversation is wont to be.
The fireflies appear to be flying, though they may be stationary on the grass stems, for their perch and the nearness of the ground are obscured by the darkness, and now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. Their light is singularly bright and glowing to proceed from a living creature. Nature loves variety in all things, and so she adds glow-worms to fireflies, though I have not noticed any this year.
The great story of the night is the moon's adventures with the clouds. What innumerable encounters she has had with them!
When I enter on the moonlit causeway, where the light is reflected from the glistening alder leaves, and their deep, dark, liquid shade beneath strictly bounds the firm damp road and narrows it, it seems like autumn. The rows of willows completely fence the way and appear to converge in perspective, as I had not noticed by day.
The bullfrogs are of various tones. Some horse in a distant pasture whinnies; dogs bark; there is that dull, dumping sound of frogs, as if a bubble containing the lifeless sultry air of day burst on the surface, a belching sound. When two or more bullfrogs trump together, it is a ten-pound-ten note.
In Conant's meadow I hear the gurgling of unwearied water, the trill of a toad, and go through the cool, primordial liquid air that has settled there. As I sit on the great door-step, the loose clapboards on the old house rattle in the wind weirdly, and I seem to hear some wild mice running about on the floor, and sometimes a loud crack from some weary timber trying to change its position.
On Conantum-top, all white objects like stones are observed, and dark masses of foliage, at a distance even. How distant is day and its associations!
The light, dry cladonia lichens on the brows of hills reflect the moon light well, looking like rocks. The night wind comes cold and whispering, murmuring weirdly from distant mountain-tops. No need to climb the Andes or Himalayas, for brows of lowest hills are highest mountain-tops in cool moonlight nights.
Is it a cuckoo's chuckling note I heard? Occasionally there is something enormous and monstrous in the size and distance of objects. A rock, is it? or an elephant asleep? Are these trees on an upland or a lowland? Or do they skirt the brink of a sea-beach? When I get there, shall I look off over the sea?
The whiteweed is the only obvious flower. I see the tops of the rye wave, and grain-fields are more interesting than by day. The water is dull-colored, hardly more bright than a rye-field. There is dew only in the low grounds.
What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other.
You may not suspect that the milk of the cocoanut which is imported from the other side of the world is mixed. So pure do some truths come to us, I trust.
What a mean and wretched creature is man! By and by some Dr. Morton may be filling your cranium with white mustard seed to learn its internal capacity. Of all ways invented to come at a knowledge of a living man, this seems to me the worst, as it is the most belated. You would learn more by once paring the toe nails of the living subject. There is nothing out of which the spirit has more completely departed, and in which it has left fewer significant traces.
Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder . . . of rich red saucer-like flowers. . . I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. See June 13, 1852 ('Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings."); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)
The fireflies appear to be flying, though they may be stationary on the grass stems, for their perch and the nearness of the ground are obscured by the darkness, and now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. Their light is singularly bright and glowing to proceed from a living creature. Nature loves variety in all things, and so she adds glow-worms to fireflies, though I have not noticed any this year.
The great story of the night is the moon's adventures with the clouds. What innumerable encounters she has had with them!
When I enter on the moonlit causeway, where the light is reflected from the glistening alder leaves, and their deep, dark, liquid shade beneath strictly bounds the firm damp road and narrows it, it seems like autumn. The rows of willows completely fence the way and appear to converge in perspective, as I had not noticed by day.
The bullfrogs are of various tones. Some horse in a distant pasture whinnies; dogs bark; there is that dull, dumping sound of frogs, as if a bubble containing the lifeless sultry air of day burst on the surface, a belching sound. When two or more bullfrogs trump together, it is a ten-pound-ten note.
In Conant's meadow I hear the gurgling of unwearied water, the trill of a toad, and go through the cool, primordial liquid air that has settled there. As I sit on the great door-step, the loose clapboards on the old house rattle in the wind weirdly, and I seem to hear some wild mice running about on the floor, and sometimes a loud crack from some weary timber trying to change its position.
On Conantum-top, all white objects like stones are observed, and dark masses of foliage, at a distance even. How distant is day and its associations!
The light, dry cladonia lichens on the brows of hills reflect the moon light well, looking like rocks. The night wind comes cold and whispering, murmuring weirdly from distant mountain-tops. No need to climb the Andes or Himalayas, for brows of lowest hills are highest mountain-tops in cool moonlight nights.
Is it a cuckoo's chuckling note I heard? Occasionally there is something enormous and monstrous in the size and distance of objects. A rock, is it? or an elephant asleep? Are these trees on an upland or a lowland? Or do they skirt the brink of a sea-beach? When I get there, shall I look off over the sea?
The whiteweed is the only obvious flower. I see the tops of the rye wave, and grain-fields are more interesting than by day. The water is dull-colored, hardly more bright than a rye-field. There is dew only in the low grounds.
What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other.
You may not suspect that the milk of the cocoanut which is imported from the other side of the world is mixed. So pure do some truths come to us, I trust.
What a mean and wretched creature is man! By and by some Dr. Morton may be filling your cranium with white mustard seed to learn its internal capacity. Of all ways invented to come at a knowledge of a living man, this seems to me the worst, as it is the most belated. You would learn more by once paring the toe nails of the living subject. There is nothing out of which the spirit has more completely departed, and in which it has left fewer significant traces.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1852
The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, the earth appears like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim. See November 30, 1852 (“The country seems to slope up from the west end of Walden to the mountain.”)
The fireflies appear to be flying . . . now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. See August 2, 1854 (“A few fireflies in the meadows. I am uncertain whether that so large and bright and high was a firefly or a shooting star.”)
There is a flower for every mood of the mind. See May 23, 1853 (" Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”); May 6, 1854 ("I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.”); June 6, 1857 (“Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.
The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, the earth appears like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim. See November 30, 1852 (“The country seems to slope up from the west end of Walden to the mountain.”)
The fireflies appear to be flying . . . now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. See August 2, 1854 (“A few fireflies in the meadows. I am uncertain whether that so large and bright and high was a firefly or a shooting star.”)
There is a flower for every mood of the mind. See May 23, 1853 (" Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”); May 6, 1854 ("I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.”); June 6, 1857 (“Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.
Methinks I am less thoughtful than I was last year at this time. See July 7, 1852 "(I am older than last year; the mornings are further between; the days are fewer.")
Dr. Morton filling your cranium with white mustard seed. Samuel George Morton believed that cranial capacity determined intellectual ability, and he used his craniometric evidence in conjunction with his analysis of anthropological literature then available to argue in favor of a racial hierarchy which put Caucasians on the top rung and Africans on the bottom. Morton's "systematic justification" for the separation of races was used by those who favored slavery in the United States.~ wikipedia
Dr. Morton filling your cranium with white mustard seed. Samuel George Morton believed that cranial capacity determined intellectual ability, and he used his craniometric evidence in conjunction with his analysis of anthropological literature then available to argue in favor of a racial hierarchy which put Caucasians on the top rung and Africans on the bottom. Morton's "systematic justification" for the separation of races was used by those who favored slavery in the United States.~ wikipedia
July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25
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 © 2009-2021
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