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| May 12 |
How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all, world-ridden.
I take my neighbor, an intellectual man, out into the woods and invite him to take a new and absolute view of things, to empty clean out of his thoughts all institutions of men and start again; but he can't do it, he sticks to his traditions and his crotchets. He thinks that governments, colleges, newspapers, etc., are from everlasting to everlasting.
The Salix cordata var. Torreyana is distinguished by its naked ovaries more or less red-brown, with flesh- colored stigmas, with a distinct slender woolly rachis and conspicuous stalks, giving the ament a loose and open appearance.
When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of.
May 12, 2017
*****
While dropping beans in the garden at Texas just after sundown (May 13th), I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone (which I have no doubt sits on some fence-post or rail there), and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field.
The spirit of its earth-song, of its serene and true philosophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world as through a glass, as it lies eternally.
Some of its aboriginal contentment, even of its domestic felicity, possessed me. What he suggests is permanently true.
As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has endured.
It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.
I would thus from time to time take advice of the birds, correct my human views by listening to their volucral (?).
He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. His lay is an idyl or pastoral, older and sweeter than any that is classic. He sits on some gray perch like himself, on a stake, perchance, in the midst of the field, and you can hardly see him against the plowed ground. You advance step by step as the twilight deepens, and lo! he is gone, and in vain you strain your eyes to see whither, but anon his tinkling strain is heard from some other quarter.
One with the rocks and with us.
Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed, at any rate only when I have no reason to be ashamed of my employment. I am often aware of a certain compensation of this kind for doing something from a sense of duty, even unconsciously.
Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us.
If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.
I ordinarily plod along a sort of whitewashed prison entry, subject to some indifferent or even grovelling mood. I do not distinctly realize my destiny. I have turned down my light to the merest glimmer and am doing some task which I have set myself. I take incredibly narrow views, live on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute truth. Mushroom institutions hedge me in.
But suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness.
As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has endured.
It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.
I would thus from time to time take advice of the birds, correct my human views by listening to their volucral (?).
He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. His lay is an idyl or pastoral, older and sweeter than any that is classic. He sits on some gray perch like himself, on a stake, perchance, in the midst of the field, and you can hardly see him against the plowed ground. You advance step by step as the twilight deepens, and lo! he is gone, and in vain you strain your eyes to see whither, but anon his tinkling strain is heard from some other quarter.
One with the rocks and with us.
Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed, at any rate only when I have no reason to be ashamed of my employment. I am often aware of a certain compensation of this kind for doing something from a sense of duty, even unconsciously.
Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us.
If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.
I ordinarily plod along a sort of whitewashed prison entry, subject to some indifferent or even grovelling mood. I do not distinctly realize my destiny. I have turned down my light to the merest glimmer and am doing some task which I have set myself. I take incredibly narrow views, live on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute truth. Mushroom institutions hedge me in.
But suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness.
*****
The second amelanchier out, in garden. Some fir balsams, as Cheney's. Is not ours in the grove, with the chip-bird's nest in it, the Abies Fraseri? Its cones are short. I hear of, and also find, a ground-bird's (song sparrow's) nest with five eggs.
P. M. — To Miles Swamp, Conantum. I hear a yorrick, apparently anxious, near me, utter from time to time a sharp grating char-r-r, like a fine watchman's rattle. As usual, I have not heard them sing yet.
A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song.
Hear the screep of the parti-colored warbler.
Veronica serpyllifolia is abundantly out at Corner Spring.
As I go along the hillside toward Miles Swamp, I mistake the very light gray cliff-sides east of the river at Bittern Cliff for amelanchier in bloom.
The brother of Edward Garfield (after dandelions!) tells me that two years ago, when he was cutting wood at Bittern Cliff in the winter, he saw something dark squatting on the ice, which he took to be a mink, and taking a stake he went to inspect it. It turned out to be a bird, a new kind of duck, with a long, slender, pointed bill (he thought red). It moved off backwards, hissing at him, and he threw his stake about a rod and partly broke its neck, then killed it. It was very lean and the river was nowhere open. He sent it to Waltham and sold it for twenty-five cents.
Black ash, maybe a day. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum.
I see a whitish cocoon on a small carpinus. It is artfully made where there is a short crook in the main stem, so as to just fill the hollow and make an even surface, the stick forming one side.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1857
When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history. See April 9, 1853 ("The more I study willows, the more I am confused. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Salix cordata (heartleaf willow); A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.
Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed. . . See November 18 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light.”); April 30, 1856 (“Surveying seemed a noble employment which brought me within hearing of this bird. I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.”); See also December 8, 1859 ("Only the poet has the faculty to see present things as if also past and future, as if universally significant.”)
As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. Compare Walden (“I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more”); See June 23, 1856. ("Bay-wings sang morning and evening . . . Its note somewhat like Come, here here, there there, —— quick quick quick (fast), — or I m gone. "); May 14, 1858 ("As I go down the railroad at evening, I hear the incessant evening song of the bay-wing from far over the fields. It suggests pleasant associations. Are they not heard chiefly at this season?")
If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. See Wordsworth;s Tintern Abbey:
, , , While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years., , ,
A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song. According to Emerson, the night warbler was "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”)
To be inspired
a thousand years hence –
be in harmony to-day.
As the bay-wing sang
many thousand years ago
so sang he to-night.
A brother poet,
one with the rocks and with me –
whose muse inspires mine.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, One with the rocks and with me
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-570517
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