As the rays of the sun fall horizontally across the placid pond, they light up the side of Baker's Pleasant Meadow Wood, which covers a hill. The different shades of green of different and the same trees, — alders, pines, birch, maple, oak, etc., — melting into one another on their rounded bosky edges, make a most glorious soft and harmonious picture, only to be seen at this season of the day and perhaps of the year.
It is a beautiful green rug with lighter shadings and rounded figures like the outlines of trees and shrubs of different shades of green. In the case of a single tree there is the dark glossy green of the lower, older leaves, — the spring growth, — which hang down, fading on every side into the silvery hoariness of the younger and more downy leaves on the edges, — the fall growth, — whose under sides are seen, which stand up, and more perhaps at this hour. This is also the case with every bush along the river, — the larger glossy dark -green watery leaves beneath and in the recesses, the upright hoary leaves whose under sides are seen on the shoots which rise above. These lighter shades in the rug had the effect of watered silks, — the edges lit, the breasts dark-green, almost the cast on green crops seen by moon-light. I never saw a forest-side look more luxuriantly and at the same time freshly beautiful.
As toward the evening of the day the lakes and streams are smooth, so in the fall, the evening of the year, the waters are smoothed more perfectly than at any other season. The day is an epitome of the year.
The smaller, or green, bittern goes over. Now, while off Conantum, we have a cool, white, autumnal twilight, and as we pass the Hubbard Bridge, see the first stars.
As toward the evening of the day the lakes and streams are smooth, so in the fall, the evening of the year, the waters are smoothed more perfectly than at any other season. The day is an epitome of the year.
The smaller, or green, bittern goes over. Now, while off Conantum, we have a cool, white, autumnal twilight, and as we pass the Hubbard Bridge, see the first stars.
H. D. Thoreau, August 19, 1853
. . . only to be seen at this season of the day and perhaps of the year. See August 19, 1851 ("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other.”); June 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point.”); November 3, 1853 (“There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference. ”);April 24, 1859("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season.")
As toward the evening of the day the lakes and streams are smooth, so in the fall, the evening of the year, the waters are smoothed more perfectly than at any other season. See October 17, 1858 ("One reason why I associate perfect reflections from still water with this and a later season may be that now, by the fall of the leaves, so much more light is let in to the water. The river reflects more light, therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were an afterglow.")
The day is an epitome of the year. See August 23, 1853 ("I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day — say an August day — and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year.”); Walden, "Spring" ("The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer."); August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.");August 15, 1853 ("an inky darkness as of night under the edge of the woods, now at noonday heralding the evening of the year.”); March 18, 1853 ("This the foreglow of the year, when the walker goes home at eve to dream of summer”); July 27, 1853 ("This the afternoon of the year. How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent!"); August 18, 1853 ("The night of the year is approaching.");
. . . only to be seen at this season of the day and perhaps of the year. See August 19, 1851 ("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other.”); June 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point.”); November 3, 1853 (“There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference. ”);April 24, 1859("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season.")
As toward the evening of the day the lakes and streams are smooth, so in the fall, the evening of the year, the waters are smoothed more perfectly than at any other season. See October 17, 1858 ("One reason why I associate perfect reflections from still water with this and a later season may be that now, by the fall of the leaves, so much more light is let in to the water. The river reflects more light, therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were an afterglow.")
The day is an epitome of the year. See August 23, 1853 ("I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day — say an August day — and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year.”); Walden, "Spring" ("The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer."); August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.");August 15, 1853 ("an inky darkness as of night under the edge of the woods, now at noonday heralding the evening of the year.”); March 18, 1853 ("This the foreglow of the year, when the walker goes home at eve to dream of summer”); July 27, 1853 ("This the afternoon of the year. How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent!"); August 18, 1853 ("The night of the year is approaching.");
See also 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.”)
We have a cool, white, autumnal twilight, and as we pass the Hubbard Bridge, see the first stars. See August 28, 1853 ("A cool, white, autumnal evening.") ; August 30, 1856 ("A cold white horizon sky in the north, forerunner of the fall of the year."); September 11, 1854 ("This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first in these respects decidedly autumnal evening.");September 29, 1854 ("This evening is quite cool and breezy, with a prolonged white twilight, quite Septemberish."); November 2, 1853 ("We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods."); November 14, 1853 ("This [October] light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November, ")
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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