Pay for your victuals with poetry.

February 27. 

P. M. — To Cliffs.

Though it was a dry, powdery snow-storm yesterday, the sun is now so high that the snow is soft and sticky this afternoon. The sky, too, is soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek. 

Health makes the poet, or sympathy with nature, a good appetite for his food, which is constantly renewing him, whetting his senses. Pay for your victuals, then, with poetry; give back life for life.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1859

Though it was a dry, powdery snow-storm yesterday, the sun is now so high. See February 13, 1859 ("The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. ")


The sky, too, is soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek. See February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light."); March 10, 1853 ("Something analogous to the thawing of the ice seems to have taken place in the air.") and note to March 2, 1854 ("What produces the peculiar softness of the air?")