I go to the Cliffs to hear if any new spring birds have arrived, for not only they are more sure to sing in the morning, but it is stiller and you can hear them better then. I hear only crows and blue jays and chickadees lisping. Excepting a few blue birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. The woods are still.
But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch ? Yet I thought it the voice of the bird and not a tapping. It reminds me of the pine warbler (?), if that is it.
I see some of my little gnats of yesterday in the morn ing sun, somewhat mosquito-like.
P. M. — No sap flows yet from my hole in the white maple by the bridge. Found on the Great Fields a fragment of Indian soapstone ware, which, judging from its curve and thinness, for a vestige of the rim remains, was a dish of the form and size of a saucer, only three times as thick.
Listening for early birds, I hear a faint tinkling sound in the leafless woods, as if a piece of glass rattled against a stone.
All enterprises must be self-supporting, must pay for themselves. The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body, — that so the life be not a failure. For instance, a poet must sustain his body with his poetry. . . .
You must get your living by loving.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 13, 1853.
But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch? See March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch")
But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch? See March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch")
Listening for early birds, I hear a faint tinkling sound in the leafless woods, as if a piece of glass rattled against a stone. See November 17, 1853 ("The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil, or a glass pendant tinkling against its neighbor “); See also December 5, 1853 (“”See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles? ); December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle."); February 18, 1855 ("I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”); March 18, 1858 (“Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides.”)
Turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body. See May 10, 1853 ("If I am overflowing with life, rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry...")
The great art of life.
Get your living by loving,
by surplus of soul.
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