At the east window

 

Sitting on this rock

wrestling with the melody

that possesses me.

The moon reflected

from the rippled surface like

a stream of dollars.

A distant piano –

the bare lichen-covered gray

rock in the moonlight.

At the east window

the clock strikes plainly ten or

eleven P.M.

Sobered by moonlight

sensing my own existence

who I am and where.

I am fitted to 

hear – my being moves in a 

sphere of melody.

zphx- 20240803

I have found all things thus far,

persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons,

strangely adapted to my resources.

Henry Thoreau, A Week (Wednesday)

*****

May 23, 1854 ("I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me.")

July 8, 1854 ("The moon reflected from the rippled surface like a stream of dollars.")

August 3, 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 . . . By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody.")

January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer.")

April 18, 1852 ("An east wind. I hear the clock strike plainly ten or eleven P.M."); 

May 3, 1852 ("The clock strikes distinctly, showing the wind is easterly. There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike, like a vast organ, filling the air with a trembling music like a flower of sound.")

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; as my walls contract, I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are. With the coolness and the mild silvery light, I recover some sanity, my thoughts are more distinct, moderated, and tempered. Reflection is more possible . . . I am sobered by the moonlight.")

See also: 

A Book of the Seasons,, Nature is genial to man
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I am a rock

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At the east window

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-eastwindow

Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward Morning.

As we sat on the bank eating our supper, 

the clear light of the western sky fell on the eastern trees, 

and was reflected in the water, 

and we enjoyed so serene an evening as left nothing to describe . . .

It is when we do not have to believe, 

but come into actual contact with Truth, 

and are related to her 

in the most direct and intimate way.

Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, 

like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. . .

This world is but canvas to our imaginations . . .
“Imagination is the air of mind,” in which it lives and breathes.

All things are as I am . . . 

I am astonished at the singular pertinacity 

and endurance of our lives. 

The miracle is, that what is is,

when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for anything else to be;

•  that we walk on in our particular paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must walk in some path; 
• that every man can get a living, and so few can do anything more. 
• So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength are gone,

 and yet this suffices . . .

When every other path would fail, 

with singular and unerring confidence 

we advance on our particular course. 

What risks we run! . . .

yet every man lives till he—dies. 

How did he manage that?

. . . 

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources . . .

Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward morning.

THE INWARD MORNING

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
    Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion’s hourly change
    It all things else repairs.

In vain I look for change abroad,
    And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
    Illumes my inmost mind.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
    And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
    With its unchanging ray?

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
    Upon a winter’s morn,
Where’er his silent beams intrude,
    The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known
    The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
    The insect’s noonday hum,—

Till the new light with morning cheer
    From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
    For many stretching miles?

I’ve heard within my inmost soul
    Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
    Have seen such orient hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,
    When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
    Where they the small twigs break,

Or in the eastern skies are seen,
    Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
    Which from afar he bears.

Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide away in thin volumes like mist and smoke, till at length, some warm morning, perchance, I see a sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, and I float as high above the fields with it. 

H. D. Thoreau, A Week, Wednesday

Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. See June 22, 1851 ("I awake . . .with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind.")

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. See Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)

Such cheerful morning news / in the horizon of my mind. See Walden (“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”); Walden ("We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”);  Walden (“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); March 17, 1852 ("There is a moment in the dawn, when the darkness of the night is dissipated and before the exhalations of the day commence to rise, when we see things more truly than at any other time")

and I float as high above the fields See Walden ("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 . . . I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it")

AND SEE.

"There is no Road":


Traveler, your footprints 

are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path 

you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea.

-Antonio Machado

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Inward Morning.

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

A body awake in the world.

 There once was a time

when the beauty and the music

were all within me.

I sat and listened

possessed by the melody,

a song in my thoughts.

This was a time when

I felt a joy that knew not

its own origin.

A pleasure, a joy, 

an existence which I had

not procured myself.

I sat on a rock

wrestling with the melody

that possesses me.

Astonished, I saw

that I am dealt with by 

superior powers.

That this earth is a

musical instrument and 

I its audience. 

Awake to music

my depths revealed to myself

as the world goes by.

And without effort

calmed like a lake when there is

not a breath of wind.

I touch the world and

feel my Maker blessing me.

I live and rejoice:

 I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

Zphx

20190521/20220112

May 23, 2020

June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as never before in our lives. We become like a still lake of purest crystal. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves . . . We live and rejoice. I awoke into a music which no one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it?  . . .I feel my Maker blessing me.”)

July 16, 1851("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes ! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — " There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)

May 23, 1854 ("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.”)

If I were to discover

that a certain kind of stone

by the pond-shore was affected,

say partially disintegrated,

by a particular natural sound,

as of a bird or insect –

I see that one

could not be completely described

without describing the other.

I am that rock by the pond-side.

February 20, 1857

*****

See also 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I am a rock

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Serene as the Sky.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-awake

All nature is a new impression every instant.

May 23. 

Sunday. Barn. - The distant woods are but the tassels of my eye.

Books are to be attended to as new sounds merely.

Most would be put to a sore trial if the reader should assume the attitude of a listener.

They are but a new note in the forest.

To our lonely, sober thought the earth is a wild unexplored. Wildness as of the jay and muskrat reigns over the great part of nature. The oven-bird and plover are heard in the horizon.

Here is a new book of heroes, come to me like the note of the chewink from over the fen, only over a deeper and wider fen.

The pines are unrelenting sifters of thought; nothing petty leaks through them.

Let me put my ear close, and hear the sough of this book, that I may know if any inspiration yet haunts it.

There is always a later edition of every book than the printer wots of, no matter how recently it was published.

All nature is a new impression every instant. 

May 23, 2020

The aspects of the most simple object are as various as the aspects of the most compound.

Observe the same sheet of water from different eminences.

When I have travelled a few miles I do not recognize the profile of the hills of my native village.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1841

When I have travelled a few miles I do not recognize the profile of the hills of my native village. See June 4, 1858 ("It is remarkable how, as you are leaving a mountain and looking back at it from time to time, it gradually gathers up its slopes and spurs to itself into a regular whole, and makes a new and total impression.")


All nature is a new impression every instant. See June 6, 1857 (“We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact”); August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); Walden: Where I lived and what I lived for ("God Himself culminates in the present moment,"); April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season")

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

I drink at it; but while I drink

I see the sandy bottom and

detect how shallow it is.

Its thin current slides away,

but eternity remains.

I would drink deeper;

fish in the sky, whose bottom

is pebbly with stars.

I cannot count one.

I know not the first 

letter of the alphabet.

I have always been regretting that

I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for

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 © 2009-2021

The native and aboriginal crab-apple.

May 23.

You have a wild savage in you, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as yours. And wilder still there grows elsewhere, I hear, a native and aboriginal crab-apple. 
. . .

This genus, so kind to the human race, the Malus or Pyrus; Rosaceæ the family, or others say Pomaceæ.

Its flowers are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree. I am frequently compelled to turn and linger by some more than usually beautiful two-thirds-expanded blossoms. If such were not so common, its fame would be loud as well as wide. Its most copious and delicious blossoms. 

But our wild apple is wild perchance like myself, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock , – where the birds, where winged thoughts or agents, have planted or are planting me. 

Even these at length furnish hardy stocks for the orchard. You might call one 

• Malus oculata; 
• another M. Iridis  M. cum parvuli dæmonis oculis, or Imp-eyed;
• Blue-Jay Apple, or M. corvi cristati; 
• Wood -Dell Apple (M. silvestri-vallis); 
• Field-Dell Apple (M. campestri-vallis); 
• Meadow Apple (M. pratensis); 
• Rock Meadow Apple (saxopratensis ); 
• Partridge or Grouse Apple or bud [sic]; 
• Apple of the Hesperides (Malus Hesperidum); Woodside Apple; 
• Wood Apple (M. silvatica); 
• the Truant's Apple (M. cessatoris); 
• Saunterer's Apple (M. erronis vel vagabundi); 
• the Wayside Apple (M. trivialis); 
• Beauty of the Air (decus aëris); 
• December-eating; 
• Frozen-thawed (gelato-soluta or gelata regelata); 
• the Concord Apple (M. Concordiensis); 
• the Brindled Apple;
•  Wine of New England (M. vinosa); 
• the Chickaree Apple;
•  the Green Apple (M. viridis); 
• the Dysentery or Cholera-morbus Apple.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1851

See May 18, 1857 ("Interesting to see a wild apple tree in the old cellar there . . . Call it Malus cellaris, that grows in an old cellar-hole.") See also Wild Apples ("There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis) also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant's Apple, (Cessatoris,) which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late it may be; the Saunterer's Apple,—you must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (Decus Aëris); December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed, (gelato-soluta,) good only in that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the Musketaquidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England; the Chickaree Apple ; the Green Apple (Malus viridis);—this has many synonymes; in an imperfect state, it is theCholera morbifera aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima;—the Apple which Atalanta stopped to pick up; the Hedge Apple (Malus Sepium); the Slug-Apple (limacea); the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue,—Pedestrium Solatium; also the Apple where hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna's Apples, and the Apples which Loki found in the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too numerous to mention,—all of them good.")

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

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 © 2009-2021

An east wind.

East window at noon –

the sound of crickets and a

distant piano.

There once was a time

when the beauty and the music
were all within me.

I sat and listened

to a positive though faint

and distant music.

I sat and listened

possessed by the melody,

a song in my thoughts.

This was a time when

I felt a joy that knew not

its own origin.

A pleasure, a joy, 

an existence which I had

not procured myself.

Astonished, I saw 

that I am dealt with by 

superior powers.

That this earth is a

musical instrument and 

I its audience 

awake to music
calmed like a lake when there is
not a breath of wind

and without effort
our depths revealed to ourselves
as the world goes by.

We touch this world and
feel exquisite pleasure – our
Maker blessing us.

An east wind. I hear
the clock strike plainly ten
or eleven P.M.

zphx 20190521, 20240418

I have found all things thus far,

persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons,

strangely adapted to my resources.

Henry Thoreau, A Week (Wednesday)

June 22, 1851 ("There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind . . . So is it with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives,. . . so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps . . . I awoke into a music which no one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it ? . . . I feel my Maker blessing me. To the sane man the world is a musical instrument . The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. ")

July 16, 1851("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes ! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — " There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)

April 18, 1852 ("An east wind. I hear the clock strike plainly ten or eleven P.M."); May 3, 1852
(" The clock strikes distinctly, showing the wind is easterly. There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike, like a vast organ, filling the air with a trembling music like a flower of sound. Nature adopts it. Beautiful is sound. ")

August 3, 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 am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody,

May 23, 1854 ("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.”)

A lightning trench

May 23. 

In Worcester. 

5 A. M.  Walk with Blake, Brown, and Rogers to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast. 

Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side. See some quite fresh frog-spawn of the dark kind, like the Rana palustris, for instance. Cross and ascend Wigwam Hill. Krigia and comandra out there. Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs. 

Found in the water, eight or ten inches deep, just behind the Lake House, a nasturtium not quite open, which I think must be a variety of the horse-radish (N. Armoracia). Yet such a variety is not described by Gray, for the immersed stem leaves were all narrowly dissected and pinnate (vide pressed specimen), and I saw similar ones in the streets in Worcester in dry ground. The lowest portion — for I had not the root — had the true horse-radish taste. It seemed to be the result of its growing at some time in water. Has the N. lacustre the common horse-radish taste? 

A little south of the Boston and Worcester turnpike, and six rods from the west side of the pond, I saw a chestnut about eighteen inches in diameter which was struck by lightning in the night some ten days ago. There was left standing only a splinter of the stump, some seven feet high, with the main limbs fallen upon and around it. The bark and thin slivers or strips of the wood had been cast to a dozen rods around in all directions, the ground being strewn with them, and some rested on the top of an adjacent wood-pile. Also one. or two large limbs were thrown to a distance. 

But what was most remarkable and peculiar, there was a trench somewhat more than two rods long, five feet wide at top, and more than two feet deep, leading perfectly straight from the foot of the tree toward the pond, large old roots being burst through, in the gravelly soil, and masses of the earth cast a rod each way, yet most of the dirt formed a bank to the trench. It would have taken an Irishman at least three hours to have dug this. Then, after an interval of three or four rods, where the ground was a little higher, the trench reappeared at the water's edge, though quite short there, exactly in the line of the first ditch continued, and there some two cartloads of gravelly soil were thrown out, and the water stood in it.

I counted in all nine places within eight or ten rods along the water's edge, or six or eight rods from the tree, where it had made a short furrow in the ground; and in some cases there were slight furrows here and there between these and the tree, as if the lightning had diverged in rays from the base of the tree, perhaps (?) at first along the roots to the pond.

Did it pass through the ground when it did not break the surface? The bark was not so much stripped off as I have seen, but the wood was finely splintered.

H. d. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1858

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

Eighteen-inch chestnut 

struck by lightning – only a 

splinter left standing.

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 © 2009-2021

This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm.

May 23. 

May 23, 2017
(avesong)

P. M. — To Holden Swamp by boat. 

River still high generally over the meadows. Can sail across the Hubbard meadow. 

Off Staples wood-lot, hear the ah tche tche chit-i-vet of the redstart. 

Tortoises out again abundantly. Each particularly warm and sunny day brings them out on to every floating rail and stump. I count a dozen within three or four feet on a rail. It is a tortoise day. 

I hear one regular bullfrog trump, and as I approach the edge of the Holden Swamp, the tree-toads. 

Hear the pepe there, and the redstarts, and the chestnut-sided warbler. It appears striped slate and black above, white beneath, yellow-crowned with black side-head, two yellow bars on wing, white side-head below the black, black bill, and long chestnut streak on side. Its song lively and rather long, about as the summer yellowbird, but not in two bars; tse tse tse \ te tsah tsah tsah \ te sak yer se is the rhythm. 

Kalmia glauca yesterday. Rhodora, on shore there, a little before it. 

Nemopanthes, a day or two. 

This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding, and the deciduous trees are hoary with them, — a silvery hoari-ness, — then, about the edges of the swamps in the woods, these birds are flitting about in the tree-tops like gnats, catching the insects about the expanding leaf-buds. 

I wade in the swamp for the kalmia, amid the water andromeda and the sphagnum, scratching my legs with the first and sinking deep in the last. The water is now gratefully cool to my legs, so far from being poisoned in the strong water of the swamp. It is a sort of baptism for which I had waited. 

At Miles Swamp, the carpinus sterile catkins, apparently a day or two, but I see no fertile ones, unless that is one (pressed) at the southeast edge of swamp near grafted apple, and its catkins are effete! 

Hear the first veery strain. 

The small twigs of the carpinus are singularly tough, as I find when I try to break off the flowers. They bend without breaking. 

Sand cherry at Lupine Bank, possibly a day. Sassafras, a day or two. Fringed polygala, I hear of.

The first goldfinch twitters over, and at evening I hear the spark of a nighthawk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1857

Off Staples wood-lot, hear the ah tche tche chit-i-vet of the redstart. See May 29, 1855 (“But what is that bird I hear much like the first part of the yellowbird’s strain, only two thirds as long and varied at end, and not so loud, — a-che che che, che-a, or tche tche tche, tche-a, or ah tche tche tche, chit-i-vet? ”); June 4, 1855 ("Redstarts still very common in the Trillium Woods (yesterday on Assabet also). Note tche, tche, tche vit, etc.”); June 6, 1855 ("On the Island I hear still the redstart—tsip tsip tsip tsip, tsit-i-yet, or sometimes tsip tsip tsip tsip, tse vet. A young male.”)  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

The chestnut-sided warbler. See May 20, 1856 ("I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. It is very lively on the maples, birches, etc., over the edge of the swamp. Sings eech eech eech | wichy wichy | tchea or itch itch itch | witty witty | tchea  ");  May 24, 1854 ("In woods the chestnut-sided warbler, with clear yellow crown and yellow on wings and chestnut sides. It is exploring low trees and bushes, often along stems about young leaves, and frequently or after short pauses utters its somewhat summer-yellowbird like note, say, tchip tchip, chip chip (quick), tche tche ter tchéa, —— sprayey and rasping and faint.")

Kalmia glauca yesterday. Rhodora, on shore there, a little before it. See May 27, 1856 ("Kalmia in prime, and rhodora. . . ."); May 26, 1855 ("To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early."); January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . . the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.") Note: the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia is known as rosemary-leaf laurel or alpine bog laurel (Andromeda Polifolia) H. Peter Loewer, Thoreau's Garden: Native Plants for the American Landscape 32-33

This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers. See note to May 18, 1856  ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce. They swarm like gnats now. They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes.")

I wade in the swamp for the kalmia, . . . a sort of baptism for which I had waited. Compare May 13, 1860 ("The swamp is so dry that I walk about it in my shoes").

The first goldfinch twitters over. See May 4, 1856 ("Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground."); May 5, 1854 ("Hear what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch and see the bird go over with ricochet flight"); May 13, 1854 ("Goldfinch heard pretty often."); May 17, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters over. ")

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

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 © 2009-2021

A Book of the Seasons: May 23 (wood pewee sings, all nature is a new impression every instant, moods of the mind)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

May 23.

Last night the eastern wood pewee was not heard, but tonight it was peeweeing in the creeping darkness of the evening. Spring is coming to an end and the thickness of summer will soon take its place. [Avesong May 24, 2009.]

Pee-a-wee, Pee-oo.

In the wood behind the spring

a wood pewee sings.

May 23, 1854

An east wind.

There once was a time

when the beauty and the music

were all within me.

I sat and listened

to a positive though faint

and distant music.

I sat and listened

possessed by the melody,

a song in my thoughts.

This was a time when

I felt a joy that knew not

its own origin.

A pleasure, a joy,

an existence which I had

not procured myself. 

Astonished, I saw

that I am dealt with by

superior powers.

That this earth is a

musical instrument, and

I its audience.

I sit on this rock

wrestling with the melody

that possesses me.

May 23, 1854

The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind. May 23, 1853

I go about to look at flowers and listen to the birds. May 23, 1854

Sorrel well open on west side of railroad causeway. May 23, 1856

I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July. May 23, 1853

Kalmia glauca yesterday. Rhodora, on shore there, a little before it. May 23, 1857

I wade in the swamp for the kalmia, amid the water andromeda and the sphagnum, scratching my legs with the first and sinking deep in the last. May 23, 1857

Now on the sunny side of the woods, the sun just bursting forth in the morning after the rain, . . . The quarter-grown red oak leaves between you and the sun, how yellow-green! May 23, 1860

This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding, and the deciduous trees are hoary with them, — a silvery hoari-ness, — then, about the edges of the swamps in the woods, these birds are flitting about in the tree-tops like gnats, catching the insects about the expanding leaf-buds. May 23, 1857

Hear the pepe there and the redstarts, and the chestnut-sided warbler. It appears striped slate and black above, white beneath, yellow-crowned with black side-head, two yellow bars on wing, white side-head below the black, black bill, and long chestnut streak on side. Its song lively and rather long, about as the summer yellowbird, but not in two bars; tse tse tse \ te tsah tsah tsah \ te sak yer se is the rhythm. May 23, 1857

Off Staples wood-lot, hear the ah tche tche chit-i-vet of the redstart. May 23, 1857

Hear often and distinctly the phe phee-ar of the new muscicapa. May 23, 1856

The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day (2 p. m.), sitting on a low limb near me, pe-a-wee, pe-a-wee, etc., five or six times at short and regular intervals, looking about all the while, and then, naively, pee-a-oo, emphasizing the first syllable, and begins again. May 23, 1854

At Loring's Wood heard and saw a tanager. That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! Even when I have heard his note and look for him and find the bloody fellow, sitting on a dead twig of a pine, I am always startled . . .  I am transported; these are not the woods I ordinarily walk in. . . How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! May 23, 1853

Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs. , May 23, 1858

The first goldfinch twitters over, and at evening I hear the spark of a nighthawk. May 23, 1857

Heard partridges drum yesterday and to-day. May 23, 1856

I hear a low, stertorous, dry, but hard-cored note from some frog in the meadows and along the riverside; often heard in past years but not accounted for. May 23, 1856

The ring of toads is loud and incessant. It seems more prolonged than it is. I think it not more than two seconds in each case. May 23, 1856

Water-bugs and skaters coupled. May 23, 1854

How different the ramrod jingle of the chewink or any bird's note sounds now at 5 p. m. in the cooler, stiller air, when also the humming of insects is more distinctly heard, and perchance some impurity has begun to sink to earth strained by the air. Or is it, perchance, to be referred to the cooler, more clarified and pensive state of the mind, when dews have begun to descend in it and clarify it? May 23, 1853.

Chaste eve! A certain lateness in the sound, pleasing to hear, which releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. May 23, 1853

I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, May 23, 1853

There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me . . . When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin. May 23, 1854

All nature is a new impression every instant. May 23, 1841 

May 23, 2020

 In dreams the links of life are united: 

we forget that our friends are dead; 

we know them as of old. 

May 23, 1853. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:

 Reminiscence and Prompting

 Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

 The world can never be more beautiful than now.

  Apple Blossom Time

 Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ) The Water-bug The Ring of Toads

 Spring Leaf-out

 Apple Blossom Time

 The Violet

 The Golden Senecio

 Wood Sorrel

 Birds of May

 The Eastern Wood Pewee

 the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe

The Scarlet Tanager in May

The Brown Thrasher

The Partridge

the Nighthawk

the Goldfinch

the Chestnut-sided Warbler

The American Redstart

The Arrival of the Eastern Wood Pewee

*****

February 20, 1857 ("If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side.“)

February 22, 1855 ("He [Farmer] had seen a partridge drum standing on a wall. Said it stood very upright and produced the sound by striking its wings together behind its back, . . .but did not strike the wall nor its body.")

 April 19, 1860 ("Toward night, hear a partridge drum. You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll.")

April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.") 

April 29, 1857 ("C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast.")

May 4, 1856 ("Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground.")

May 5, 1854 ("Hear what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch and see the bird go over with ricochet flight")

 May 11, 1853 (" Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded") 

May 11, 1859 ("Young, or fresh-expanding, oak leaves are very handsome now, showing their colors. It is a leafy mist throughout the forest.")

May 13, 1854 ("Goldfinch heard pretty often.") 

May 13, 1860 ("The swamp is so dry that I walk about it in my shoes"). ;

May 15, 1854 ("The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens. . . . Oak leaves are as big as a mouse's ear.”)

May 15, 1860 ("Looking from the Cliffs through the haze, the deciduous trees are a mist of leaflets.”)

May 17, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters over.")

May 18, 1851 ("The oak leaves of all colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers") 

May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce. They swarm like gnats now. They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes.")

May 20, 1856 ("I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. It is very lively on the maples, birches, etc., over the edge of the swamp. Sings eech eech eech | wichy wichy | tchea or itch itch itch | witty witty | tchea ")

May 22, 1854 (“I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent.”) 

 May 24, 1854 ("In woods the chestnut-sided warbler, with clear yellow crown and yellow on wings and chestnut sides. It is exploring low trees and bushes, often along stems about young leaves, and frequently or after short pauses utters its somewhat summer-yellowbird like note, say, tchip tchip, chip chip (quick), tche tche ter tchéa, —— sprayey and rasping and faint.")

May 25, 1860 ("Red and white oak leafets handsome now")

May 26, 1855 ("To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early.")

May 26, 1857 ("Very interesting now are the red tents of expanding- oak leaves, as you go through sprout-lands, — the crimson velvet of the black oak and the more pinkish white oak. The salmon and pinkish-red canopies or umbrellas of the white oak") 

May 27, 1856 ("Kalmia in prime, and rhodora.")

May 29, 1855 (“But what is that bird I hear much like the first part of the yellowbird’s strain, only two thirds as long and varied at end, and not so loud, — a-che che che, che-a, or tche tche tche, tche-a, or ah tche tche tche, chit-i-vet? ”)

June 4, 1855 ("Redstarts still very common in the Trillium Woods (yesterday on Assabet also). Note tche, tche, tche vit, etc.”)

June 6, 1855 ("On the Island I hear still the redstart—tsip tsip tsip tsip, tsit-i-yet, or sometimes tsip tsip tsip tsip, tse vet. A young male.”)

January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer.")

January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . . the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.")

 Note: the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia is known as rosemary-leaf laurel or alpine bog laurel (Andromeda Polifolia) H. Peter Loewer, Thoreau's Garden: Native Plants for the American Landscape 32-33

*****

 

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

 May 22 < <<<<<May 23   >>>>> May 24

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

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

  https://tinyurl.com/HDT23May