Sunday, November 12, 2023

Listening for the Last Cricket.


 I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

At the east window. — A temperate noon.
I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano  . . .
At length the melody steals into my being. 
I know not when it began to occupy me.
By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance 
I am attuned to the universe.

I hear one cricket – 
his theme is life immortal
now after one snow.

Novembeer 12, 2023

November 8Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song.  November 8, 1853

November 8  I hear a small z-ing cricket. November 8, 1859

November 11Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct.  November 11, 1855

November 11I afterward hear a few of the common cricket on the side of Clamshell. Thus they are confined now to the sun on the south sides of hills and woods. They are quite silent long before sunset. November 11, 1858

November 12 The ground is frozen and echoes to my tread. There are absolutely no crickets to be heard now. They are heard, then, till the ground freezes. November 12, 1851

November 12 I hear one cricket singing still, faintly deep in the bank, now after one whitening of snow. His theme is life immortal. The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might. November 12, 1853

November 13. Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters.  November 13, 1851

November 13.   Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs.  November 13, 1858

November 15.  I hear in several places a faint cricket note, either a fine z-ing or a distincter creak, also see and hear a grasshopper's crackling flight.  November 15, 1859

November 19.  Turning up a stone on Fair Haven Hill, I find many small dead crickets about the edges, which have endeavored to get under it and apparently have been killed by the frost. November 19, 1857

November 22.  Saw E. Hosmer this afternoon making a road for himself along a hillside . . . He turned over a stone, and I saw under it many crickets and ants still lively, which had gone into winter quarters there apparently . . . That is the reason, then, that I have not heard the crickets lately.   November 22, 1851

See also :

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 ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDTnovcrkt

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts Last 30 Days.

The week ahead in Henry’s journal

The week ahead in Henry’s journal
A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy.
"A stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought." ~ H. D. Thoreau, March 28, 1859


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