Monday, May 23, 2016

A Book of the Seasons: May 23 (wood pewee sings, all nature is a new impression every instant, moods of the mind)


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.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852



 Last night the eastern wood pewee was not heard, but tonight it was peeweeing in the creeping darkness of the evening. Spring is coming to an end and the thickness of summer will soon take its place. [Avesong May 24, 2009.]


Pee-a-wee, Pee-oo.
In the wood behind the spring
a wood pewee sings.




An east wind.

There once was a time
when the beauty and the music
were all within me.

I sat and listened
to a positive though faint
and distant music.

I sat and listened
possessed by the melody,
a song in my thoughts.

This was a time when
I felt a joy that knew not
its own origin.

A pleasure, a joy,
an existence which I had
not procured myself. 

Astonished, I saw
that I am dealt with by
superior powers.

That this earth is a
musical instrument, and
I its audience.

I sit on this rock
wrestling with the melody
that possesses me.




The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind. May 23, 1853

I go about to look at flowers and listen to the birds. May 23, 1854

Sorrel well open on west side of railroad causeway. May 23, 1856

I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July. May 23, 1853

Kalmia glauca yesterday. Rhodora, on shore there, a little before it. May 23, 1857

I wade in the swamp for the kalmia, amid the water andromeda and the sphagnum, scratching my legs with the first and sinking deep in the last. May 23, 1857

Now on the sunny side of the woods, the sun just bursting forth in the morning after the rain, . . . The quarter-grown red oak leaves between you and the sun, how yellow-green! May 23, 1860

This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding, and the deciduous trees are hoary with them, — a silvery hoari-ness, — then, about the edges of the swamps in the woods, these birds are flitting about in the tree-tops like gnats, catching the insects about the expanding leaf-buds. May 23, 1857

Hear the pepe there and the redstarts, and the chestnut-sided warbler. It appears striped slate and black above, white beneath, yellow-crowned with black side-head, two yellow bars on wing, white side-head below the black, black bill, and long chestnut streak on side. Its song lively and rather long, about as the summer yellowbird, but not in two bars; tse tse tse \ te tsah tsah tsah \ te sak yer se is the rhythm. May 23, 1857

Off Staples wood-lot, hear the ah tche tche chit-i-vet of the redstart. May 23, 1857

Hear often and distinctly the phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa. May 23, 1856

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. May 23, 1854

At Loring's Wood heard and saw a tanager. That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the bloody fellow, sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled . . .  I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in. . . How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! May 23, 1853

Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs. , May 23, 1858

The first goldfinch twitters over, and at evening I hear the spark of a nighthawk. May 23, 1857

Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. May 23, 1856

I hear a low, stertorous, dry, but hard-cored note from some frog in the meadows and along the riverside; often heard in past years but not accounted for. May 23, 1856

The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case. May 23, 1856

Water-bugs and skaters coupled. May 23, 1854

How different the ramrod jingle of the chewink or any bird's note sounds now at 5 p. m. in the cooler, stiller air, when also the humming of insects is more distinctly heard, and perchance some impurity has begun to sink to earth strained by the air. Or is it, perchance, to be referred to the cooler, more clarified and pensive state of the mind, when dews have begun to descend in it and clarify it? May 23, 1853.

Chaste eve! A certain lateness in the sound, pleasing to hear, which releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. May 23, 1853

I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, May 23, 1853

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 . . . When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin. May 23, 1854

All nature is a new impression every instant. May 23, 1841 


May 23, 2020

 In dreams the links of life are united: 
we forget that our friends are dead; 
we know them as of old. 
May 23, 1853. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:


*****
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.“)
February 22, 1855 ("He [Farmer] had seen a partridge drum standing on a wall. Said it stood very upright and produced the sound by striking its wings together behind its back, . . .but did not strike the wall nor its body.")
 April 19, 1860 ("Toward night, hear a partridge drum. You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll.")
April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.") 
April 29, 1857 ("C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast.")
May 4, 1856 ("Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground.")
May 5, 1854 ("Hear what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch and see the bird go over with ricochet flight")
 May 11, 1853 (" Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded") 
May 11, 1859 ("Young, or fresh-expanding, oak leaves are very handsome now, showing their colors. It is a leafy mist throughout the forest.")
May 13, 1854 ("Goldfinch heard pretty often.") 
May 13, 1860 ("The swamp is so dry that I walk about it in my shoes"). ;
May 15, 1854 ("The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens. . . . Oak leaves are as big as a mouse's ear.”)
May 15, 1860 ("Looking from the Cliffs through the haze, the deciduous trees are a mist of leaflets.”)
May 17, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters over.")
May 18, 1851 ("The oak leaves of all colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers") 
May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce. They swarm like gnats now. They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes.")
May 20, 1856 ("I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. It is very lively on the maples, birches, etc., over the edge of the swamp. Sings eech eech eech | wichy wichy | tchea or itch itch itch | witty witty | tchea ")
May 22, 1854 (“I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent.”) 


 May 24, 1854 ("In woods the chestnut-sided warbler, with clear yellow crown and yellow on wings and chestnut sides. It is exploring low trees and bushes, often along stems about young leaves, and frequently or after short pauses utters its somewhat summer-yellowbird like note, say, tchip tchip, chip chip (quick), tche tche ter tchéa, —— sprayey and rasping and faint.")
May 25, 1860 ("Red and white oak leafets handsome now")
May 26, 1855 ("To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early.")
May 26, 1857 ("Very interesting now are the red tents of expanding- oak leaves, as you go through sprout-lands, — the crimson velvet of the black oak and the more pinkish white oak. The salmon and pinkish-red canopies or umbrellas of the white oak") 
May 27, 1856 ("Kalmia in prime, and rhodora.")
May 29, 1855 (“But what is that bird I hear much like the first part of the yellowbird’s strain, only two thirds as long and varied at end, and not so loud, — a-che che che, che-a, or tche tche tche, tche-a, or ah tche tche tche, chit-i-vet? ”)
June 4, 1855 ("Redstarts still very common in the Trillium Woods (yesterday on Assabet also). Note tche, tche, tche vit, etc.”)
June 6, 1855 ("On the Island I hear still the redstart—tsip tsip tsip tsip, tsit-i-yet, or sometimes tsip tsip tsip tsip, tse vet. A young male.”)
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.")
January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . . the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.")

 Note: the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia is known as rosemary-leaf laurel or alpine bog laurel (Andromeda Polifolia) H. Peter Loewer, Thoreau's Garden: Native Plants for the American Landscape 32-33


*****

 

If you make the least correct 
observation of nature this year,
 you will have occasion to repeat it
 with illustrations the next, 
and the season and life itself is prolonged.



A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23
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 © 2009-2022



  https://tinyurl.com/HDT23May 



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I sit on this rock
wrestling with the melody
that possesses me.
May 23, 1854