The Poem I Would Have Writ

 

August 28. Saturday.

A great poet will write for his peers alone, and indite no line to an inferior. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and calmly expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

Johnson can no more criticise Milton than the naked eye can criticise Herschel's map of the sun.

The art which only gilds the surface and demands merely a superficial polish, without reaching to the core, is but varnish and filigree. 

But the work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates the lapse of time and has an ingrained polish, which still appears when fragments are broken off, an essential quality of its substance. Its beauty is its strength. 

It breaks with a lustre, and splits in cubes and diamonds. Like the diamond, it has only to be cut to be polished, and its surface is a window to its interior splendors.

True verses are not counted on the poet's fingers, but on his heart-strings.

        My life hath been the poem I would have writ,
        But I could not both live and live to utter it.

In the Hindoo scripture the idea of man is quite illimitable and sublime. There is nowhere a loftier conception of his destiny. He is at length lost in Brahma himself, "the divine male." Indeed, the distinction of races in this life is only the commencement of a series of degrees which ends in Brahma.

The veneration in which the Vedas are held is itself a remarkable fact. Their code embraced the whole moral life of the Hindoo, and in such a case there is no other truth than sincerity. 

Truth is such by reference to the heart of man within, not to any standard without. There is no creed so false but faith can make it true.

In inquiring into the origin and genuineness of this scripture it is impossible to tell when the divine agency in its composition ceased, and the human began. "From fire, from air, and from the sun" was it "milked out."

There is no grander conception of creation anywhere. It is peaceful as a dream, and so is the annihilation of the world. It is such a beginning and ending as the morning and evening, for they had learned that God's methods are not violent. It was such an awakening as might have been heralded by the faint dreaming chirp of the crickets before the dawn.

The very indistinctness of its theogony implies a sublime truth. It does not allow the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, but directly hints of a supremer still which created the last. The creator is still behind, increate. 

The divinity is so fleeting that its attributes are never expressed.


H. D Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1841

The poem I would have writ. See A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; also Walden (Solitude) ("By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.") 


See also August 5, 1851 ("As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment. ... I am sobered by the moonlight. I bethink myself.”); August 17, 1851 ("How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected?"); November 18, 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); and August 8, 1852 ("I am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself")

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Poem I Would Have Writ

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-410828

A new November evening come round again,

November 1.

November 1, 2018

P. M. — To Poplar Hill. 

Many black oaks are bare in Sleepy Hollow. 

Now you easily detect where larches grow, viz. in the swamp north of Sleepy Hollow. They are far more distinct than at any other season. They are very regular soft yellow pyramids, as I see them from the Poplar Hill. Unlike the pines there is no greenness left to alternate with their yellow, but they are a uniform yellow, and they differ from other yellow trees in the generally regular pyramidal outline, i. e. these middling-sized trees. These trees now cannot easily be mistaken for any other, be cause they are the only conspicuously yellow trees now left in the woods, except a very few aspens of both kinds, not one in a square mile, and these are of a very different hue as well as form, the birches, etc.,; having fallen. The larch, apparently, will soon be the only yellow tree left in the woods. It is almost quite alone now. But in the summer it is not easy to distinguish them either by their color or form at a distance. 

If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed. You might live to the age of Methusaleh and never find a tithe of them otherwise.

We are not wont to see our dooryard as a part of the earth’s surface. The gardener does not perceive that some ridge or mound in his garden or lawn is related to yonder hill or the still more distant mountain in the horizon, is, perchance, a humble spur of the last. We are wont to look on the earth still as a sort of chaos, formless and lumpish. 

I notice from this height that the curving moraine forming the west side of Sleepy Hollow is one of several arms or fingers which stretch away from the hill range that runs down the north side of the Boston road, turning northward at the Court-House; that this finger-like moraine is continued northward by itself almost to the river, and points plainly enough to Ponkawtasset Hill on the other side, even if the Poplar Hill range itself did not indicate this connection; and so the sloping cemetery lots on the west of Sleepy Hollow are related to the distant Ponkawtasset. 

he smooth-shaven knoll in the lawn, on which the children swing, is, perchance, only a spur of some mountains of the moon, which no traveller has ever reached, heaved up by the same impulse. 

The hawthorn is but three-quarters fallen and is a greenish yellow or yellowish green. 

I hear in the fields just before sundown a shriller chirping of a few crickets, reminding me that their song is getting thin and will soon be quenched. 

As I stood on the south bank of the river a hundred rods southwest of John Flint’s, the sun being just about to enter a long and broad dark-blue or slate-colored cloud in the horizon, a cold, dark bank, I saw that the reflection of Flint’s white house in the river, prolonged by a slight ripple so as to reach the reflected cloud, was a very distinct and luminous light blue.

As the afternoons grow shorter, and the early evening drives us home to complete our chores, we are reminded of the shortness of life, and become more pensive, at least in this twilight of the year. We are prompted to make haste and finish our work before the night comes. 

I leaned over a rail in the twilight on the Walden road, waiting for the evening mail to be distributed, when such thoughts visited me. I seemed to recognize the November evening as a familiar thing come round again, and yet I could hardly tell whether I had ever known it or only divined it. The November twilights just begun! 

It appeared like a part of a panorama at which I sat spectator, a part with which I was perfectly familiar just coming into view, and I foresaw how it would look and roll along, and prepared to be pleased. Just such a piece of art merely, though infinitely sweet and grand, did it appear to me, and just as little were any active duties required of me. 

We are independent on all that we see. The hangman whom I have seen cannot hang me. The earth which I have seen cannot bury me. Such doubleness and distance does sight prove. Only the rich and such as are troubled with ennui are implicated in the maze of phenomena. You cannot see anything until you are clear of it. 

The long railroad causeway through the meadows west of me, the still twilight in which hardly a cricket was heard, the dark bank of clouds in the horizon long after sunset, the villagers crowding to the post-office, and the hastening home to supper by candle-light, had I not seen all this before! What new sweet was I to extract from it? Truly they mean that we shall learn our lesson well. Nature gets thumbed like an old spelling-book. 

The almshouse and Frederick were still as last November. I was no nearer, methinks, nor further off from my friends. Yet I sat the bench with perfect contentment, unwilling to exchange the familiar vision that was to be unrolled for any treasure or heaven that could be imagined. Sure to keep just so far apart in our orbits still, in obedience to the laws of attraction and repulsion, affording each other only steady but indispensable starlight. It was as if I was promised the greatest novelty the world has ever seen or shall see, though the utmost possible novelty would be the difference between me and myself a year ago. This alone encouraged me, and was my fuel for the approaching winter. That we may behold the panorama with this slight improvement or change, this is what we sustain life for with so much effort from year to year.

And yet there is no more tempting novelty than this new November. 

No going to Europe or another world is to be named with it. Give me the old familiar walk, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We’ll go nutting once more. We'll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it in the winter evenings. Theatres and all other sightseeing are puppet-shows in comparison. I will take another walk to the Cliff, another row on the river, another skate on the meadow, be out in the first snow, and associate with the winter birds. Here I am at home. In the bare and bleached crust of the earth I recognize my friend.

One actual Frederick that you know is worth a million only read of. Pray, am I altogether a bachelor, or am I a widower, that I should go away and leave my bride? This Morrow that is ever knocking with irresistible force at our door, there is no such guest as that. I will stay at home and receive company.

I want nothing new, if I can have but a tithe of the old secured to me. I will spurn all wealth beside. Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here. 

Here are all the friends I ever had or shall have, and as friendly as ever. Why, I never  had any quarrel with a friend but it was just as sweet as unanimity could be. I do not think we budge an inch forward or backward in relation to our friends. How many things‘ can you go away from? They see the comet from the northwest coast just as plainly as we do, and the same stars through its tail. 

Take the shortest way round and stay at home. A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are. Here is your bride elect, as close to you as she can be got. Here is all the best and all the worst you can imagine. What more do you want? Bear here-away then! Foolish people imagine that what they imagine is somewhere else. That stuff is not made in any factory but their own.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal , November 1, 1858

Now you easily detect where larches grow. See October 24, 1852 (“The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance.”);   October 27 1855 (“Larches are yellowing.”) and  note to November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change.”)

We are reminded of the shortness of life, and become more pensive, at least in this twilight of the year. We are prompted to make haste and finish our work before the night comes. See August 18, 1853 ("The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life."); October 27, 1858 (“the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”)

We are independent on all that we see. . .. You cannot see anything until you are clear of it. See August 8, 1852 ("[I]am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. ")

Take the shortest way round and stay at home. See January 11, 1852 (But if I travel in a simple, primitive, original manner, standing in a truer relation to men and nature, . . . get some honest experience of life . . . then it becomes less important whither I go or how far."); May 6, 1854 ("It matters not where or how far you travel, — the farther commonly the worse, — but how much alive you are."); November 20, 1857 ("A man is worth most to himself and to others, whether as an observer, or poet, or neighbor, or friend, where he is most himself, most contented and at home.")

November 1. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 1

\

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A  man will eat his heart,

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

Escaping the mower

July 29.

Most fields are so completely shorn now that the walls and fence-sides, where plants are protected, appear unusually rich. 

I know not what aspect the flowers would present if our fields and meadows were untouched for a year, if the mower were not permitted to swing his scythe there. No doubt some plants contended long in vain with these vandals, and at last withdrew from the contest. 

About these times some hundreds of men with freshly sharpened scythes make an irruption into my garden when in its rankest condition, and clip my herbs all as close as they can, and I am restricted to the rough hedges and worn-out fields which had little to attract them, to the most barren and worthless pastures. 

I know how some fields of johnswort and goldenrod look, left in the natural state, but not much about our richest fields and meadows.

The sight of the small rough sunflower about a dry ditch bank and hedge advances me at once further toward autumn. At the same time I hear a dry, ripe, autumnal chirp of a cricket. It is the next step to the first goldenrod. 

It grows where it escapes the mower, but no doubt, in our localities of plants, we do not know where they would prefer to grow if unmolested by man, but rather where they best escape his vandalism. How large a proportion of flowers, for instance, are referred to and found by hedges, walls, and fences.

Beck Stow's is much frequented by cows, which burst through the thickest bushes.

Butterflies of various colors are now more abundant than I have seen them before, especially the small reddish or coppery ones. 

I counted ten yesterday on a single Sericocarpus conyzoides. They were in singular harmony with the plant, as if they made a part of it. 

July 29, 2017

The insect that comes after the honey or pollen of a plant is necessary to it and in one sense makes a part of it. 

Being constantly in motion and, as they moved, opening and closing their wings to preserve their balance, they presented a very lifesome scene. 

To-day I see them on the early goldenrod (Solidago stricta).

American pine-sap, just pushing up, — false beech- drops. Gray says from June to August. It is cream-colored or yellowish under the pines in Hubbard's Wood Path. Some near the fence east of the Close. A plant related to the tobacco-pipe.

Remarkable this doubleness in nature, — not only that nature should be composed of just these individuals, but that there should be so rarely or never an individual without its kindred, — its cousin. It is allied to something else. There is not only the tobacco-pipe, but pine- sap. 

Brister's Hill. There are some beautiful glossy, firm ferns there, – Polytichum acrostichoides (?), shield fern. Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line. 

I also see some small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake atop, also some dead yellow and orange.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1853

Butterflies of various colors are now more abundant. See July 15, 1854 (“There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now.”)

The insect that comes after the honey or pollen of a plant is necessary to it and in one sense makes a part of it. See March 18, 1860 (“There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. . . .No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring.”)

Polytichum acrostichoides (?), shield fern. [Christmas fern] Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line. See September 30, 1859 ("Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens.")

July 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 29

The insect that comes

for the pollen of a plant

becomes part of it.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Escaping the mower

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 ©  2009-2022

We walk to the watering hole at sunset, then down the streambed scoured out by rains earlier this summer. Orange glow in the west fades to dusk; magically, the woods  fill with fireflies and the flute of the thrush.

Magically at dusk

the woods fill with fireflies and

the flute of the thrush.

zphx July 29, 2013

A human entity

August 8

5 A.M. –– Awoke into a rosy fog.  

I was enveloped by the skirts of Aurora.

August 8, 2014

The small dewdrops rest on the Asclepias pulchra by the roadside like gems and the flower has lost half its beauty when they are shaken off,  

I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1852 

Doubleness.  See A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:

"My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it."

Walden (Solitude) ("With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. ")  See also  

 

 I see my shadow

as a second person who 

sits down on this rock.

June 11, 1851 

August 17, 1851 ("How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected?");  November 18, 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); April 28, 1860 (" Now that the hum of insects begins to be heard []You seem to have a great companion with you. . .  as if it were the noise of your own thinking.")

The tragedy of life - a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only. See December 15, 1852 ("But is this fact of "our life " commonly but a puff of air, a flash in the pan, a smoke, a nothing? It does not afford arena for a tragedy.")

Discovery/ perception of truth. See 2/27/1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived.”). See also September 4-7, 1851(" All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.”); September 24 1854("The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation”) November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it.”); January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.")

"I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me…." Charles Darwin, Autobiography 99 (Norton paperback edition reissued 2005)

"It is impossible to solve a difficulty except by discovering a truth." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8

I am conscious of

my double to whom I am

a kind of fiction.

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 ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-18520808