Circular patches
of snow in the shadow of
the still leafless trees.
Spring flowers flash out,
the blossom precedes the leaf.
So with poetry.
I hear first to-day
the seezer seezer of the
black and white creeper.
Willows now in bloom
resound with the hum of bees
this warm afternoon.
The hum of insects
like noise of one's own thinking,
voiceful, significant.
April 28, 2017
***
Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now. See April 4, 1859 ("Brown Season of the spring lasts from the time the snow generally begins to go off. . .through the first week of April this year. Ordinary years it must be somewhat later.")
Icy cold northwest wind, and snow whitening the mountains. See April 28, 1858 ("Blustering northwest wind and wintry aspect. "); April 28, 1855 ("The wind is strong from the northwest"); See also April 26, 1860 ("the cold weather of yesterday; the chilling wind came from a snow-clad country.")- .grass blades in favorable localities. See April 1, 1855 ("When I look out the window I see that the grass on the bank on the south side of the house is already much greener than it was yesterday)
- a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet. See April 25, 1859 ( "I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail")
- the decided greenness and floweriness of the earth, in May. See May 18, 1852 ("I doubt if the landscape will be any greener.")
- the decided leafiness in June. See May 26, 1854 (At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. . . . The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant."); June 9, 1852 ("The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season.")
This year, at least, one flower hardly precedes another, but as soon as the storms are over and pleasant weather comes, all blossom at once. See April 9, 1854 ("The flowers have blossomed very suddenly this year as soon as the long cold spell was over, and almost all together.")
We have in the spring of the year the spring of the world represented. See April 27, 1852 ("I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage (Saxifraga vernalis) in blossom, growing high and dry in the narrow seams, where there is no soil for it but a little green moss. Following thus early after the bare rock, it is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world.”); February 11, 1854 (“[T]hey must have preceded other trees in the order of creation, as they precede them annually in their blossoming and leafing."); May 22, 1858 ("So was it also in a former geological age, when water and water-plants prevailed and before man was here to behold them. The sun was then reflected from the lily pad after the May storm as brightly as now.”); June 6, 1853 ("The spring, that early age of the world, following hard on the reign of water and the barren rocks yet dripping with it, is past.”)
A bird suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further. See April 27, 1855 ("The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird—like notes."); See also 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.”); September 17, 1857 (“How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone.!”); March 23, 1856 ("By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper
The wind is strong from the northwest. Land at Ball’s Hill / waves run quite high. See March 16, 1859 (“As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters.”)
There are a great many myrtle-birds here, — they have been quite common for a week. The myrtle-birds flit before us in great numbers, yet quite tame, uttering commonly only a chip, but some times a short trill or che che, che che, che che. See April 28, 1858 (“I see the myrtle-bird in the same sunny place, south of the Island woods, as formerly.”); April 28, 1859 (“The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed”); See also April 26, 1854 ("The woods are full of myrtle-birds this afternoon, more common and commonly heard than any, especially along the edge of woods on oaks, etc., — their note an oft-repeated fine jingle, a tea le, tea le, tea le."); May 1, 1855 ("The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee,"); May 4, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning")
Thus are the earliest seen each spring in some warm and calm place by the waterside, when it is cool and blustering elsewhere. See April 28, 1855 ("In a cold and windy day like this you can find more birds than in a serene one, because they are collected under the wooded hillsides in the sun.”)
See, but not yet hear, the familiar chewink amid the dry leaves amid the underwood on the meadow’s edge. See April 26, 1854 ("Hear the first chewink hopping and chewinking among the shrub oaks."); April 26, 1855 ("See and hear chewinks, — all their strains; the same date with last year, by accident"): April 26, 1858 (" See a chewink (male) in the Kettell place woods."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink (Rufous-sided Towhee)
See a shad-fly, one only, on water. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”). Compare May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”)
A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above. See October 29, 1857 (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”)
E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin. See April 18, 1859 (“Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium.. . .Two salamanders, . . . One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)”); December 5, 1858 (“How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection.”); December 3, 1858 ("brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back; the tail is waved on the edge (upper edge, at least); has a pretty, bright eye. Its tail, though narrower, reminds me of the pollywog.")
This boisterous weather is the time to see it. See April 28, 1860 ("Sitting on Mt. Misery, I see a very large bird of the hawk family, blackish with a partly white head but no white tail, - probably a fish hawk; sail quite near, looking very large. "); April 14, 1852 (“The streams break up; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)
The spotted tortoise is spotted on shell, head, tail, and legs. See April 27, 1852 ("Bright-yellow spots on both shell and head, yet not regularly disposed, but as if, when they were finished in other respects, the maker had sprinkled them with a brush. This fact, that the yellow spots are common to the shell and the head, affected me considerably, as evincing the action of an artist from without; spotted with reference to my eyes. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)
A fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. See April 24, 1855 ("That fine slaty-blue butterfly, bigger than the small red, in wood-paths."); March 23, 1856 ("By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me."); March 10, 1855; ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. . . . But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.")
Pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, —seeing with the side of the eye. See April 28, 1858 ("While standing by my compass over the supposed town bound . . ., I saw with the side of my eye some black creature crossing the road,"); See also, e.g. September 13, 1852 ("Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 (" It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); April 13, 1860 ("It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came . . .to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.")
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
No comments:
Post a Comment