The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day (2 p. m.), sitting on a low limb near me, pe-a-wee, pe-a-wee, etc., five or six times at short and regular intervals, looking about all the while, and then, naively, pee-a-oo, emphasizing the first syllable, and begins again. It flies off occasionally a few feet, catches an insect and returns to its perch between the bars, not allowing this to interrupt their order.
We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copsewood dreams of a wilderness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him. The red-bird which I saw on my companion's string on election days I thought but the outmost sentinel of the wild, immortal camp, — of the wild and dazzling infantry of the wilderness, — that the deeper woods abounded with redder birds still; but, now that I have threaded all our woods and waded the swamps, I have never yet met with his compeer, still less his wilder kindred.
The red-bird which is the last of Nature is but the first of God. The White Mountains, likewise, were smooth mole hills to my expectation. We condescend to climb the crags of earth. It is our weary legs alone that praise them. That forest on whose skirts the red-bird flits is not of earth.
I expected a fauna more infinite and various, birds of more dazzling colors and more celestial song.
I expected a fauna more infinite and various, birds of more dazzling colors and more celestial song.
How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!
Will not Nature select her types from a new fount? The vignette of the year. This earth which is spread out like a map around me is but the lining of my inmost soul exposed. In me is the sucker that I see. No wholly extraneous object can compel me to recognize it. I am guilty of suckers. I go about to look at flowers and listen to the birds.
The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day. See May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Arrival of the Eastern Wood Pewee
We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. Compare May 10, 1853 ("I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant") and August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought, and what he indistinctly feels or perceives is matured in some other organization. The objects I behold correspond to my mood.")
How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river! In me is the sucker that I see. See note to March 28, 1857 "I can remember now some thirty years — after a fashion — of life in Concord, and every spring there are many dead suckers floating belly upward on the meadows."
I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. See January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer."); Auguat 7, 1854 ("Our mind is like the strings of a harp which is swept, and we stand and listen"); February 20, 1857 ("If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side. ")
When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin. July 16, 1851("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes ! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — " There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers.1 This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)
to sit up late and hear Jenny Lind. See August 30, 1856 (“I get my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush. ”)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The wood pewee sings in the wood behind the spring.
Will not Nature select her types from a new fount? The vignette of the year. This earth which is spread out like a map around me is but the lining of my inmost soul exposed. In me is the sucker that I see. No wholly extraneous object can compel me to recognize it. I am guilty of suckers. I go about to look at flowers and listen to the birds.
There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music, not sung by any bird, nor vibrating any earthly harp. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin. When I was an organ of which the world was but one poor broken pipe. I lay long on the rocks, foundered like a harp on the seashore, that knows not how it is dealt with. I sat on the earth as on a raft, listening to music that was not of the earth, but which ruled and arranged it.
Man should be the harp articulate. When your cords were tense.
Think of going abroad out of one's self to hear music, — to Europe or Africa! Instead of so living as to be the lyre which the breath of the morning causes to vibrate with that melody which creates worlds — to sit up late and hear Jenny Lind!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1854
Think of going abroad out of one's self to hear music, — to Europe or Africa! Instead of so living as to be the lyre which the breath of the morning causes to vibrate with that melody which creates worlds — to sit up late and hear Jenny Lind!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1854
The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day. See May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Arrival of the Eastern Wood Pewee
We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. Compare May 10, 1853 ("I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant") and August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought, and what he indistinctly feels or perceives is matured in some other organization. The objects I behold correspond to my mood.")
How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river! In me is the sucker that I see. See note to March 28, 1857 "I can remember now some thirty years — after a fashion — of life in Concord, and every spring there are many dead suckers floating belly upward on the meadows."
I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. See January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer."); Auguat 7, 1854 ("Our mind is like the strings of a harp which is swept, and we stand and listen"); February 20, 1857 ("If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side. ")
When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin. July 16, 1851("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes ! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — " There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers.1 This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)
to sit up late and hear Jenny Lind. See August 30, 1856 (“I get my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush. ”)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The wood pewee sings in the wood behind the spring.
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
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540523
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