A Book of the Seasons: December 31.

December 31

Morning creations, 

frost now seen against the sun –

a mist in the night.

December 31, 1855 

Nature has a day

for each of her creations.

This is their solstice.

December 31, 1851

Hearing the whistle

takes me out of my body

and I see clearly.

December 31, 1853

Hearing the whistle

of the locomotive takes

me out of body.

 

I see clearly what

at other times I only

dimly remember . . .

 

The earth's extent

the freedom of all nature

and the sky's depth.

December 31, 1853

Sugar is not so

sweet to the palate as sound

to the healthy ear.

December 31, 1853

How glorious the

perfect stillness and peace of

the winter landscape.

December 31, 1854

A mist in the night,

frost now seen against the sun –

morning creation.

December 31, 1855

December 31, 2017

I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. December 31, 1853

I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. December 31, 1853

I get the value of the earth's extent and the sky's depth. December 31, 1853

 It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. December 31, 1853

I leave my body in a trance and accompany the zephyr and the fragrance. December 31, 1853

He that hath ears, let him hear. December 31, 1853

 Sugar is not so sweet to the palate, as sound to the healthy ear. December 31, 1853

The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy. December 31, 1853

*****

April 15, 1859 ("We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them. . . . Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work.")

May 1, 1857 ("The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but It is a sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea, that breaks on our ears with the surf of the air, a sound that is almost breathed with the wind.")

May 23, 1854 ("Think of going abroad out of one's self to hear music . . .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.")

August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”)

August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”)

September 12, 1851 ("I heard the telegraph-wire vibrating . . .. It told me by the faintest imaginable strain, it told me by the finest strain that a human ear can hear, yet conclusively and past all refutation, that there were higher, infinitely higher, planes of life which it behooved me never to forget.")

November 21, 1857 ("Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction.. . . the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one.")

 January 12, 1855 (" What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.”)

February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. . . . I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. “)

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 © 2009-2015