Even the ox can be weary with toil.

 

December 26.

 December 26, 2017

I observed this afternoon that when Edmund Hosmer came home from sledding wood and unyoked his oxen, they made a business of stretching and scratching themselves with their horns and rubbing against the posts, and licking themselves in those parts which the yoke had prevented their reaching all day.

The human way in which they behaved affected me even pathetically. They were too serious to be glad that their day's work was done; they had not spirits enough left for that. They behaved as a tired woodchopper might.

This was to me a new phase in the life of the laboring ox.

It is painful to think how they may sometimes be overworked. I saw that even the ox could be weary with toil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1851

To be glad that their day's work was done. See  June 22, 1851 ("After a hard day's work without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day."); July 12, 1851 ("I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil"); June 25, 1852 ("Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour. Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! "); 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."); See also John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 24, 1869 ("A very hard day's work has been done. At evening I sit on a rock by the edge of the river, to look at the water, and listen to its roar.")

Even the ox could be weary with toil. See April 2, 1860 ("The ox, tired with his day's work, is compelled to take his rest, like the most wretched slave")