Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.
Evening draws on, smoothing the waters and lengthening the shadows, now half an hour or more before sundown.
The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence. It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than before. The poet arouses himself and collects his thoughts.
Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle. See. August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days."); August 13, 1856 ("Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aromatic Herbs
What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening. . . before the twilight? See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive. . . .Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water."); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night.") and A Book of the Seasons, The hour before sunset
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
Aug. 11.
5 A. M. — Up North
Branch.
A considerable fog.
The weeds still
covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii.
B. chrysanthemoides
just out.
The small, dull, lead-colored
berries of the Viburnum dentatum now hang over the water.
The Amphicarpæa
monoica appears not to have bloomed.
Chickweed ( Stellaria
media ) appears the most constant flower and most regardless of seasons.
Cerastium blooms
still.
Button-bush and
mikania now in prime, and cardinals.
Lilies rather scarce
(? ), but methinks less infested with insects.
The river sprinkled
with meadow-hay afloat.
P. M. – To Conantum.
This is by some
considered the warmest day of the year thus far; but, though the weather is
melting hot, yet the river having been deepened and cooled by the rains, we
have none of those bathing days of July,’52.
Yesterday or day
before, I heard a strange note, me thought from somebody’s poultry, and looking
out saw, I think a bittern, go squawking over the yard — from the river
southwestward.
A bittern, flying
over, mingles its squawk with the cackling of poultry.
Did I not hear a
willet yesterday? At the Swamp Bridge Brook, flocks of cow troopials now about
the cows.
These and other
blackbirds, flying in flocks now, make a great chattering, and also the
bobolinks.
What a humming of
insects about the sweet-scented clethra blossoms, honey-bees and others, and
flies and various kinds of wasps!
I see some naked viburnum berries red and some purple now.
There are berries
which men do not use, like choke-berries, which here in Hubbard’s Swamp grow in
great profusion and blacken the bushes.
How much richer we
feel for this unused abundance and superfluity! Nature would not appear so rich,
the pro fusion so rich, if we knew a use for everything.
Plums and grapes,
about which gardeners make such an ado, are in my opinion poor fruits compared
with melons.
The great rains have
caused those masses of small green high blueberries, which commonly do not get
ripe, to swell and ripen, so that their harvest fulfills the promise of their
spring.
I never saw so many,
— even in swamps where a fortnight ago there was no promise.
What a helpless
creature a horse is out of his element or off his true ground!
Saw John Potter’s horse mired in his meadow, which has been
softened by the rains.
His small hoofs
afford no support.
He is furious, as if
mad, and is liable to sprain himself seriously.
His hoofs go through
the crust like stakes, into the soft batter beneath, though the wheels go well
enough.
Woodbine is reddening
in some places, and ivy too.
Collinsonia just
begun.
Found — rather
garrulous (his breath smelled of rum).
Was complaining that
his sons did not get married.
He told me his age
when he married (thirty-odd years ago), how his wife bore him eight children
and 369 then died, and in what respect she proved herself a true woman, etc.,
etc.
I saw that it was as
impossible to speak of marriage to such a man — to the mass of men-as of poetry.
Its advantages and
disadvantages are not such as they have dreamed of.
Their marriage is
prose or worse.
To be married at
least should be the one poetical act of a man's life.
If you fail in this
respect, in what respect will you succeed?
The marriage which the mass of men comprehend is but little
better than the marriage of the beasts.
It would be just as
fit for such a man to discourse to you on the love of flowers, thinking of them
as hay for his oxen.
The difference
between men affects every phase of their lives, so that at last they cannot
communicate with each other.
An old man of average
worth, who spoke with the downrightness and frankness of age, not exaggerating
aught, said he was troubled about his water, etc., — altogether of the earth.
Evening draws on
while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height.
I find it amid the
stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a
fragrant bundle.
Evening draws on,
smoothing the waters and lengthening the shadows, now half an hour or more
before sundown.
What constitutes the
charm of this hour of the day?
Is it the condensing of dews in the air just beginning, or
the grateful increase of shadows in the landscape?
Some fiat has gone forth and stilled the ripples of the lake;
each sound and sight has acquired ineffable beauty.
How agreeable, when
the sun shines at this angle, to stand on one side and look down on flourishing
sprout-lands or copses, where the cool shade is mingled in greater proportion
than before with the light!
Broad, shallow lakes
of shadow stretch over the lower portions of the top of the woods.
A thousand little
cavities are filling with coolness.
Hills and the least
inequalities in the ground begin to cast an obvious shadow.
The shadow of an elm
stretches quite across the meadow.
I see pigeons (?) in
numbers fly up from the stubble.
I hear some young
bluebird’s plaintive warble near me and some young hawks uttering a puling
scream from time to time across the pond, to whom life is yet so novel.
From far over the
pond and woods I hear also a farmer calling loudly to his cows, in the clear
still air, “ Ker, ker, ker, ker.”
What shall we name
this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this severe and
placid season of the day, most favorable for reflection, after the insufferable
heats and the bustle of the day are over and before the dampness and twilight
of evening!
The serene hour, the
Muses ’hour, the season of reflection!
It is commonly
desecrated by being made tea time.
It begins perhaps
with the very earliest condensation of moisture in the air, when the shadows of
hills are first observed, and the breeze begins to go down, and birds begin
again to sing.
The pensive season.
It is earlier than
the “chaste eve” of the poet.
Bats have not come
forth.
It is not twilight.
There is no dew yet
on the grass, and still less any early star in the heavens.
It is the turning-point
between afternoon and evening.
The few sounds now
heard, far or near, are delicious.
It is not more dusky
and obscure, but clearer than 371 before.
The clearing of the
air by condensation of mists more than balances the increase of shadows.
Chaste eve is merely
preparing with “dewy finger” to draw o’er all “the gradual dusky veil.
”Not yet“ the plough
man homeward plods his weary way, ” nor owls nor beetles are abroad.
It is a season
somewhat earlier than is celebrated by the poets.
There is not such a
sense of lateness and approaching night as they describe.
I mean when the first
emissaries of Evening come to smooth the lakes and streams.
The poet arouses himself
and collects his thoughts.
He postpones tea
indefinitely.
Thought has taken her
siesta.
Each sound has a
broad and deep relief of silence
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