I love to hear the wind howl.

April 13.  

April 13, 2012

Tuesday.  A driving snow - storm in the night and still raging; five or six inches deep on a level at 7 A.  M. 

All birds are turned into snowbirds.  

Trees and houses have put on the aspect of winter.  

The traveller’s carriage wheels, the farmer’s wagon, are converted into white disks of snow through which the spokes hardly appear.  

But it is good now to stay in the house and read and write.  We do not now go wandering all abroad and dissipated, but the imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts. I can hear the clock tick as not in pleasant weather.  My life is enriched.  

I love to hear the wind howl. 

I have a fancy for sitting with my book or paper in some mean and apparently unfavorable place, in the kitchen, for instance, where the work is going on, rather a little cold than comfortable.  My thoughts are of more worth in such places than they would be in a well furnished and warmed studio.  

Windsor, according to Gilpin, is contracted from wind-shore, the Saxons not sounding the sh.  

The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul, carols.  The jingle of the song sparrow, simple and sweet as it is, is not of sufficient volume nor sufficiently continuous to command and hold attention, and the bluebird’s is but a transient warble, from a throat overflowing with azure and serene hopes; but the song of the robin on the elms or oaks, loud and clear and heard afar through the streets of a village, makes a fit conclusion to a spring day.  The larks are not yet in sufficient numbers or sufficiently musical.  The robin is the prime singer as yet. 

The blackbird’s conqueree, when first heard in the spring, is pleasant from the associations it awakens, and is best heard by one boating on the river.  It belongs to the stream.  

The robin is the only bird with whose song the groves can be said to be now vocal morning and evening, for, though many other notes are heard, none fill the air like this bird.  As yet no other thrushes.  

Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep.  

Heard the robin singing as usual last night, though it was raining.  

The elm buds begin to show their blossoms.  

As I came home through the streets at 11 o’clock last night through the snow, it cheered me to think that there was a little bit of a yellow blossom by warm sandy watersides which had expanded its yellow blossom on the sunny side amid the snows.  I mean the catkins of the earliest willow.  

To think of those little sunny spots in nature, so incredibly contrasting with all this white and cold.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1852

The imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts. I can hear the clock tick. See  December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold, for it compels the prisoner to try new fields and resources.”)

I love to hear the wind howl. See October 5, 1853 ("The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds like a loon on the pond. ”)

Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep.  See April 6, 1852 ("Last night a snow-storm, and this morning we find the ground covered again six or eight inches deep") See also note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.")

The elm buds begin to show their blossoms. See April 13, 1859 ("The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. I hear a purple finch on one"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul. See  April 8, 1855 ("The robins now sing in full blast "); April 16, 1856 ("The robins sing with a will now. What a burst of melody!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

It cheered me to think that there was a little bit of a yellow blossom by warm sandy watersides which had expanded its yellow blossom on the sunny side amid the snows. See  April 12, 1852 (" See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . this earliest, perhaps swamp, willow with its bright-yellow blossoms on one side of the ament. It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun")