The perception of truth vs. the collection of facts.

December 16.

The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon.

The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of vapor, — the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel, — which seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold.

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon his “long levelled rules” fall sector wise, and humblest cottage windows greet their lord.

FACTS 

How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning.

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated.

Mere accumulators of facts — collectors of materials for the master-workmen — are like those plants growing in dark forests, which “put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1837

The blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon. See April 16, 1855 ("I could see very clearly the pale salmon of the eastern horizon reflected there and contrasting with an intermediate streak of skim-milk blue, — now, just after sunrise.")

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon humblest cottage windows greet their lord. See April 16, 1856 ("5.30 A. M. — A little sunshine at the rising. I see it first reflected from E. Wood’s windows before I can see the sun.")

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. See June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth.”); February 18, 1852 ("I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. ... I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, ... I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all.") February 23. 1860 ("A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread.")

December 16. See A Book of the Seasons, By Henry Thoreau, December 16 

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

tinyurl.com/hdt371216

May we measure our lives by our joys.

February 23

2 P. M. — Thermometer 56°. Wind south. 

3 P. M. — Thermometer 58° and snow almost gone. River rising. 

We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December (which was remarkably warm). 

I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's purse (circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed. 

February 23, 2019

About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west. Thus the first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower. 

The words “pardall” and “libbard,” applied by Gesner to the same animal, express as much of the wild beast as any. 

I read in Brand's “Popular Antiquities  that “Bishop Stillingfleet observes, that among the Saxons of the northern nations, the Feast of the New Year was observed with more than ordinary jollity: thence , as Olaus Wormius and Scheffer observe, they reckoned their age by so many Iolas.” (Iola, to make merry. – Gothic.) 

So may we measure our lives by our joys. We have lived, not in proportion to the number of years that we have spent on the earth, but in proportion as we have enjoyed. 

February is pronounced the coldest month in the year. In B.'s “Popular Antiquities” is quoted this from the Harleian Manuscripts:

"Février de tous les mois, 

Le plus court et moins courtois.”

In the same work it is said that this saying is still current in the north of England: 

“On the first of March, 

The crows begin to search.”

Would it not apply to the crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water's edge, a little later? 

A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread. 

Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, as when the moralist fables and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm, moist, incarnated, — have been breathed on at least. 

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23. 1860

We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December. See February 23, 1856 ("At 2 P. M. the thermometer is 47°. Whenever it is near 40 there is a speedy softening of the snow") and note to February 8. 1860 ("40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring.")

See the green radical leaves of the shepherd's purse. See January 7, 1855 ("The delicious soft, spring-suggesting air, how it fills my veins with life ! . . . On the slopes the ground is laid bare and radical leaves revealed, crowfoot, shepherd's-purse, clover, etc., a fresh green, and, in the meadow, the skunk-cabbage buds, with a bluish bloom, and the red leaves of the meadow saxifrage; and these and the many withered plants laid bare remind me of spring."); January 23, 1855 ("The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew."); March 8, 1859 ("The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright"); April 25, 1855 ("Shepherd's-purse will bloom to-day, the first I have noticed which has sprung from the ground this season, or of an age.")

 The first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower. See February 14, 1861 ("A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. I see two flashes and hear two claps.")

A brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west. See August 7, 1852 ("If I were to choose a time for a friend to make a passing visit to this world for the first time, in the full possession of all his faculties, perchance it would be at a moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky.")

So may we measure our lives by our joys. See July 13, 1852 ("A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.")

Crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water's edge, a little later? See March 5, 1859 ("I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet"); March 22, 1855 ("I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago."); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?")

A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. See December 16, 1837 ("The fact will one day flower out into a truth."); August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”); November 9, 1851 ("Facts should be material to the mythology which I am writing; I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic.”); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”); June 21, 1852 ("Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions . . . The perception of beauty is a moral test"); May 6, 1854 (“There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective.")

February 23.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 23

A brilliant rainbow –

yellow light from under the

dark cloud in the west.

A bare fact is dry –

a man has not seen a thing 

who has not felt it.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May we measure our lives by our joys.

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-600223

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science.

February 18

I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth to heaven. I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, — perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind, — I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all. 

P. M.— To Fair Haven Hill. 

One discovery in meteorology, one significant observation, is a good deal. I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds. 

I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. 

The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes. 

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science. The poet's second love may be science, not his first, — when use has worn off the bloom. I realize that men may be born to a condition of mind at which others arrive in middle age by the decay of their poetic faculties.

H. D Thoreau, Journal,  February 18, 1852

The most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry . See May 6, 1854 (“There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. ”); November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”)

I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds. See December 25, 1851 ("I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing.")  September 13, 1852 (“I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.”)

I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. See note to  February 11, 1855 (“The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard”)

 This must be one of the spring signs.  See  February 18, 1854 (“It does not take so much fuel to keep us warm of late. I begin to think that my wood will last. We begin to have days precursors of spring.”); February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . . I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau., signs of spring: mosses bright green

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science. See February 13, 1852 ("Color, which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline or pencil sketches and become men of science."); February 16, 1852 ("Linnæus says elementa are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia. . . .By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.");  November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”); February 28, 1860 ("As it is important to consider Nature from the point of view of science, remembering the nomenclature and system of men, and so, if possible, go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.")

A transient perception of immortal beauty. Angels from the north.

December 11

P. M. —To Holden Swamp, Conantum. 

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

For the first time I wear gloves, but I have not walked early this season. 

I see no birds, but hear, methinks, one or two tree sparrows. No snow; scarcely any ice to be detected. It is only an aggravated November. 

I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring the leafets of the swamp pyrus which had put forth again, now frost bitten, the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda. 

Slowly I worm my way amid the snarl, the thicket of black alders and blueberry, etc.; see the forms, apparently, of rabbits at the foot of maples, and catbirds’ nests now exposed in the leafless thicket. 

Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ...

The traveller is frozen on his way. But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow! As if a flower were created to be now in bloom, a peach to be now first fully ripe on its stem. 

I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature.

There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances. When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he does not suggest poverty, but dazzles us with his beauty. 

The winter, with its snow and ice, is not an evil to be corrected. It is as it was designed and made to be, for the artist has had leisure to add beauty. My acquaintances, angels from the north. ....

.... My acquaintances, angels from the north. I had a vision thus of these birds as I stood in the swamps. I saw this familiar fact at a different angle.

It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. 

Only what we have touched and worn is trivial, —our scurf, repetition, tradition, conformity. 

To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired. 

Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle. 

My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. I can generally recall-- have fresh in my mind --several scratches last received. These I continually recall to mind, reimpress, and harp upon. 

The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls. 

In winter, too, resides immortal youth and perennial summer.

We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. 

Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice. From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow. 

Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear. 

Then I try to discover what it was in the vision that charmed and translated me. For I am surprised and enchanted often by some quality which I cannot detect. 

It is a wonderful fact that I should be affected, and thus deeply and powerfully, more than by aught else in all my experience, — that this fruit should be borne in me and bear flowers and fruits of immortal beauty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 11, 1855

It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. See 1850 (“What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape ?”); March 29, 1853 ("Not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. ")

My body is all sentient. See July 16 1851 ("I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction . . To have such sweet impressions made on me”); the Maine Woods (" Daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world!"); June 21, 1852 ("With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions."); ;August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”); August 30 1856 (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter”); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

Zphx

But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow! See November 21, 1852  ("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. . . . They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. ); March 5, 1853 ("They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . . They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll

When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he dazzles us with his beauty. See December 24, 1851 (“Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; . . .when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps, with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be.”)

Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow color. See January 21, 1838 ("The scene changed at every step, or as the head was inclined to the right or the left. There were the opal and sapphire and emerald and jasper and beryl and topaz and ruby"); December 11, 1854 ("It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.”); 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. It is as if the dust of diamonds and other precious stones were spread all around. The blue and red predominate."); compare April 9, 1855 ("With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter?")

We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. See June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test"); January 21, 1838 ("If I seek her elsewhere because I do not find her at home, my search will prove a fruitless one.")

December 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 11

In this bare landscape

I am overcome by the 

beauty of the world.

Great winter itself 

reflecting rainbow colors

like a precious gem.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A transient perception of immortal beauty. 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551211

The journey to the mountaintop

October 20. 

Think not your journey

to the mountantop is lost

that you have no glass.

Many a man, when I tell him that I have been on to a mountain, asks if I took a glass with me. No doubt, I could have seen further with a glass, and particular objects more distinctly, - could have counted more meeting-houses; but this has nothing to do with the peculiar beauty and grandeur of the view which an elevated position affords. 

It was not to see a few particular objects, as if they were near at hand, as I had been accustomed to see them, that I ascended the mountain, but to see an infinite variety far and near in their relation to each other, thus reduced to a single picture.

The facts of science, in comparison with poetry, are wont to be as vulgar as looking from the mountain with a telescope. It is a counting of meeting-houses.

At the public house, the mountain-house, they keep a glass to let, and think the journey to the mountaintop is lost, that you have got but half the view, if you have not taken a glass with you.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1852

As vulgar as looking from the mountain with a telescope.  See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day");  January 31, 1855 ("As I passed the mouth of Larned Brook, off Wayland meeting-house, I pulled out my glass and saw that it was 12.30 o’clock."); March 18, 1858 ("I sit on the Cliff, and look toward Sudbury. I see its meeting-houses and its common, and its fields lie but little beyond my ordinary walk, but I never played on its common nor read the epitaphs in its graveyard, and many strangers to me dwell there. How distant in all important senses may be the town which yet is within sight! We see beyond our ordinary walks and thoughts. With a glass I might perchance read the time on its clock.")

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

~ Li Po

Think not your journey

to the mountantop is lost

that you have no glass.

Facts and names and dates in a meadow

January 27

The snow has been slowly melting, without rain or mist, the last two or three days. It has settled very much, though the eaves have not been heard to run by me. In going across lots, I walk in the woods, where the snow is not so deep, part having been caught in the trees and dissipated in the air, and a part melted by the warmth of the wood and the reflection. 

The poison sumach, with its stems hanging down on every side, is a very agreeable object now, seen against the snow. 

I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays. They are now allied to life, and are seen by the reader not to be far-fetched. It is more simple, less artful. I feel that in the other case I should have no proper frame for my sketches. Mere facts and names and dates communicate more than we suspect. Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1852

I do not know but thoughts written down in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays.

They are now allied to life, more simple, less artful. Mere facts and names and dates communicate more than we suspect.

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it!

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Facts and names and dates in a meadow

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

My facts shall be falsehoods

November 9.

In our walks C. takes out his note-book sometimes and tries to write as I do, but all in vain. He soon puts it up again, or contents himself with scrawling some sketch of the landscape. Observing me still scribbling, he will say that he confines himself to the ideal, purely ideal remarks; he leaves the facts to me.

Sometimes, too, he will say a little petulantly, "I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite."

I, too, would fain set down something beside facts.

Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing; not facts to assist men to make money, farmers to farm profitably, in any common sense; facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought: as now the bell rings for evening meeting, and its volumes of sound, like smoke which rises from where a cannon is fired, make the tent in which I dwell.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal.

James P. Brown's retired pond, now shallow and more than half dried up, seems far away and rarely visited, known to few, though not far off. It is encircled by an amphitheatre of low hills, on two opposite sides covered with high pine woods, the other sides with young white oaks and white pines respectively. I am affected by beholding there reflected this gray day, so unpretendingly, the gray stems of the pine wood on the hillside and the sky, - that mirror, as it were a permanent picture to be seen there, a permanent piece of idealism.

What were these reflections to the cows alone! Were these things made for cows' eyes mainly? You shall go over behind the hills, where you would suppose that otherwise there was no eye to behold, and find this piece of magic a constant phenomenon there. It is not merely a few favored lakes or pools that reflect the trees and skies, but the obscurest pond-hole in the most unfrequented dell does the same.

These reflections suggest that the sky underlies the hills as well as overlies them, and in another sense than in appearance.

I am a little surprised on beholding this reflection, which I did not perceive for some minutes after looking into the pond, as if I had not regarded this as a constant phenomenon. What has become of Nature's common sense and love of facts, when in the very mud-puddles she reflects the skies and trees?

I knew that this pond was early to freeze; I had for gotten that it reflected the hills around it. So retired! which I must think even the sordid owner does not know that he owns. It is full of little pollywogs now. Pray, when were they born? 

November 9, 2024

To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood.

Pitch pine cones very beautiful, not only the fresh leather-colored ones but especially the dead gray onescovered with lichens, the scales so regular and close, like an impenetrable coat of mail. These are very hand some to my eye; also those which have long since opened regularly and shed their seeds.

An abundance of the rattlesnake plantain in the woods by Brown's Pond, now full of a fine chaffy seed (?). 

Now the leaves are gone the birds' nests are revealed, the brood being fledged and flown. There is a perfect adaptation in the material used in constructing a nest. There is one which I took from a maple on the cause way at Hubbard's Bridge. It is fastened to the twigs by white woolen strings (out of a shawl?), which it has picked up in the road, though it is more than half a mile from a house; and the sharp eyes of the bird have discovered plenty of horsehairs out of the tail or mane, with which to give it form by their spring; with fine meadow hay for body, and the reddish woolly material which invests the ferns in the spring (apparently) for lining.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1851


I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. See February 18, 1852 ("I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. ... I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, ... I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all."); April 18, 1852 (“I am serene and satisfied when … … the events of the day have a mythological character, and the most trivial is symbolical.”);  June 19, 1852 ("Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samaræ, tinged with his expectation  Oh may my words be verdurous and sempiternal as the hills!Facts fall from the poetic observer as ripe seeds."); May 10, 1853 (“Nature will be my language full of poetry, all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. … I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant”); May 31, 1853 (“Some incidents in my life have seemed far more allegorical than actual; they were so significant that they plainly served no other use. That is, they have been like myths or passages in a myth, rather than mere incidents or history, which have to wait to become significant.”)

Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought. See December 31, 1859 (“Do you suppose they were a race of consumptives and dyspeptics who in- vented Grecian mythology and poetry ? The poet's words are , " You would almost say the body thought ! " I quite say it . “) 

I am a little surprised on beholding this reflection, which I did not perceive for some minutes after looking into the pond  . . . See November 2, 1857 ("I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river's bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections. Their minds are not abstracted from the surface, from surfaces generally. It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. "); October 7, 1857 ("Unless you look for reflections, you commonly will not find them.")

To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation. See November 9, 1850 ("It is a pleasant surprise to walk over a hill where an old wood has recently been cut off, and, on looking round, to see, instead of dense ranks of trees almost impermeable to light, distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village over an expanded open country. ")

November 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 9

To-day the mountains 

are dark blue – so dark that they 

look like new mountains.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, My facts shall be falsehoods

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

I, too, would fain set down something beside facts. Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing; not facts to assist men to make money, farmers to farm profitably, in any common sense; 

facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought: as now the bell rings for evening meeting, and its volumes of sound, like smoke which rises from where a cannon is fired, make the tent in which I dwell. 

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense, I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic.

Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts

 which the body thought, – with these I deal. 

I, too, cherish vague and misty forms, vaguest when the cloud at which I gaze is dissipated quite and naught but the skyey depths are seen. 

As now the bell rings

and volumes of sound make the

tent in which I dwell

I would so state facts 

they shall be significant

and mythologic  –

facts to frame and tell

who I am, where I have been

or what I have thought

facts the mind perceived

thoughts the body thought.

November 9, 1851