By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe.

August 3

The Hypericum Sarothra appears to be out.

12 M.   At the east window. A temperate noon. I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano.

The music reminds me of imagined heroic ages; it suggests such ideas of human life and the field which the earth affords as the few noblest passages of poetry.

Those few interrupted strains which reach me through the trees suggest the same thoughts and aspirations that all melody, by whatever sense appreciated, has ever done.

I am affected.

What coloring variously fair and intense our life admits of! How a thought will mould and paint it! Impressed by some vague vision, as it were, elevated into a more glorious sphere of life, we no longer know this, we can deny its existence. We say we are enchanted, perhaps.

But what I am impressed by is the fact that this enchantment is no delusion. So far as truth is concerned, it is a fact such as what we call our actual existence, but it is a far higher and more glorious fact.It is evidence of such a sphere, of such possibilities.

It is its truth and reality that affect me. A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. 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, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. 

August 3, 2015

This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood.

It is possible to live a grander life here; already the steed is stamping, the knights are prancing; already our thoughts bid a proud farewell to the so-called actual life and its humble glories.

Now this is the verdict of a soul in health. But the soul diseased says that its own vision and life alone is true and sane.

What a different aspect will courage put upon the face of things! This suggests what a perpetual flow of spirit would produce.

Of course, no man was ever made so truly generous, was so expanded by any vile draught, but that he might be equally and more expanded by imbibing a saner and wholesomer draught than ever he has swallowed. There is a wine that does not intoxicate; there is a pure juice of the grape, and unfermented.

What kind of draught is that which the aspirant soul imbibes? 

In every part of Great Britain are discovered the traces of the Romans, -- their funereal urns, their lamps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundation of our houses in the ashes of a former civilization.

P. M. - To Boulder Field.

Vernonia Noveboracensis, iron-weed, by Flint's Bridge, began to open by July 31st; a tall plant with a broad fastigiate corymb of rich dark-purple thistle-like flowers, the middle ones opening first.

Saw two hay carts and teams cross the shallow part of the river in front of N. Barrett's, empty, to the Great Meadows. An interesting sight. The Great Meadows alive with farmers getting their hay. I could count four or five great loads already loaded in different parts.

Clematis Virginiana just begun.

Observed a low prostrate veronica with roundish, regularly opposite leaves, some what crenulate, and white flowers veined with purple, in damp, cool grass. Think I have not seen it before.

A houstonia still.

The huckleberries in the low ground by the river beyond Flint's are large and fresh. The black shine as with a gloss, and the blue are equally large.

Looking down into the singular bare hollows from the back of hill near here, the paths made by the cows in the sides of the hills, going round the hollows, made gracefully curving lines in the landscape, ribbing it. The curves, both the rising and falling of the path and its winding to right and left, are agreeable.

What remarkable customs still prevail at funerals! 

The chief mourner, though it may be a maiden who has lost her lover, consents to be made a sort of puppet and is by them put forward to walk behind the corpse in the street, before the eyes of all, at a time which should be sacred to grief; is, beside, compelled, as it were, to attend to the coarse and unfeeling, almost inevitably to her impertinent, words of consolation or admonition, so called, of whatever clerical gentleman may be in the neighborhood.

Friends and neighbors of the family should bury their dead. It is fitting that they should walk in procession with parade and even assumed solemnity. It is for them to pay this kind of respect to the dead, that it be not left to hirelings alone. It is soothing to the feelings of the absent mourners.

They may fitly listen to the words of the preacher, but the feelings of the mourners should be respected.

Spergularia rubra, spurry sandwort, a pretty, minute red flower spreading flat by roadside, nearly out of blossom.

Apparently Urtica dioica, but not very stinging, may have been out some time.

Hypericum mutilum, probably last part of July.

Took that interesting view from one of the boulder rocks toward Lincoln Hills, between Hubbard's Hill and Grove and Barrett's, whose back or north and wooded side is in front, a few oaks and elms in front and on the right, and some fine boulders slumbering in the foreground.  It is a peculiar part of the town, -- the old bridle-road plains further east. A great tract here of unimproved and unfrequented country, the boulders sometimes crowned with barberry bushes.

I hear crows, the robin, huckleberry-birds, young bluebirds, etc. 

The sun coming out of a cloud and shining brightly on patches of cudweed reminds me of frost on the grass in the morning.

A splendid entire rainbow after a slight shower, with two reflections of it, outermost broad red, passing through yellow to green, then narrow red, then blue or indigo (not plain what), then faint red again. It is too remarkable to be remarked on.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 3, 1852

The Hypericum Sarothra appears to be out.  See August 3, 1856 ("Sarothra apparently now in prime.") See also August 12, 1856 (“The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.”);  August 19, 1856 ("The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like. ); August 30, 1856("The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee.”); September 2, 1859 ("The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides. "); September 19, 1852 ("The red capsules of the sarothra."); September 23, 1852 ("The sarothra in bloom") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

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

I hear the sound of a distant piano. See November 20, 1851 ("It is often said that melody can be heard farther than noise, and the finest melody farther than the coarsest. I think there is truth in this, and that accordingly those strains of the piano which reach me here in my attic stir me so much more."); January 24, 1852 ("I hear the tones of my sister's piano below . It reminds me of strains which once I heard more frequently, when, possessed with the inaudible rhythm, I sought my chamber in the cold and commụned with my own thoughts"); June 18, 1852 ("I hear a man playing a clarionet far off."); December 31, 1853 ("IThe contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy.”); January 13, 1857 ("I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived.")

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. See August 6, 1852 (" We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); August 23, 1853 ("Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end"); Walden (" Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength."); 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."); December 5, 1856 (" I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too"); February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. . . . I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other.")

Took that interesting view from one of the boulder rocks toward Lincoln Hills, some fine boulders slumbering in the foreground. . A great tract here of unimproved and unfrequented country, the boulders sometimes crowned with barberry bushes. April 21, 1852 (" In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, . . . A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have. C. calls it Boulder Field.") November 3, 1857 (" As I return down the Boulder Field, I see the now winter-colored — i.e. reddish (of oak leaves) — horizon of hills, with its few white houses, four or five miles distant southward, between two of the boulders. . . — as a landscape between the frame of a picture. . . .It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it")

A splendid entire rainbow. See June 22, 1852 ("What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow, yet how little it is remarked!"); August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty"); August 7, 1852 ("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."); August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow.") 

August 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 3

East window at noon –
the sound of crickets and a

distant piano.

By some fortunate 

circumstance I am attuned 

to the universe.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Attuned to the Universe

 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-520803

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

Sunset rainbow.

August 7. 

When I think of the thorough drilling to which young men are subjected in the English universities, acquiring a minute knowledge of Latin prosody and of Greek particles and accents, so that they can not only turn a passage of Homer into English prose or verse, but readily a passage of Shakespeare into Latin hexameters or elegiacs, — that this and the like of this is to be liberally educated, — I am reminded how different was the education of the actual Homer and Shakespeare. The worthies of the world and liberally educated have always, in this sense, got along with little Latin and less Greek. 

At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green. The rich and moist English grass land looks very green after the rain, as if it were a second spring. 

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. 

Would he be likely to think this a vulgar place to live [sic], where one would weary of existence, and be compelled to devote his life to frivolity and dissipation? If a man travelling from world to world were to pass through this world at such a moment, would he not be tempted to take up his abode here? 

We see the rainbow apparently when we are on the edge of the rain, just as the sun is setting. If we are too deep in the rain, then it will appear dim. Sometimes it is so near that I see a portion of its arch this side of the woods in the horizon, tingeing them. Sometimes we are completely within it, enveloped by it, and experience the realization of the child's wish. The obvious colors are red and green. 

Why green? It is astonishing how brilliant the red may be. What is the difference between that red and the ordinary red of the evening sky? Who does not feel that here is a phenomenon which natural philosophy alone is inadequate to explain? The use of the rainbow, who has described it?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 7, 1852



At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring. See note to August 4, 1853 ("The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring."). See also August 4, 1852 ("The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. . . . A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still."); August 4, 1854 ("A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.")


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. See  August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty");  August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow."); June 22, 1852 ("Thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. "); March 15. 1859 ("Two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year.");

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face?

June 22. 

8 p.m. — Up the Union Turnpike. 

We have had a succession of thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. 

How moral the world is made! This bow is not utilitarian. Methinks men are great in proportion as they are moral. After the rain He sets his bow in the heavens! The world is not destitute of beauty. Ask of the skeptic who inquires, Cui bono? why the rainbow was made. While men cultivate flowers below, God cultivates flowers above; he takes charge of the parterres in the heavens. 

June 22, 2016

I feel my Maker blessing me

June 22, 1851 

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face? How glorious should be the life of man passed under this arch! What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow, yet how little it is remarked! 

Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet, with white-barred wings. 

The scent of the balm-of-Gilead leaves fills the road after the rain. 

There are the amber skies of evening, the colored skies of both morning and evening! Nature adorns these seasons.

Unquestionable truth is sweet, though it were the announcement of our dissolution.

More thunder-showers threaten, and I still can trace those that are gone by.

The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. The far-retreated thunder-clouds low in the southeast horizon and in the north, emitting low flashes which reveal their forms, appear to lift their wings like fireflies; or it is a steady glare like the glow worm. Wherever they go, they make a meadow.

 I hear no toads this cool evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1852

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face? See March 3, 1841 ("God's voice is but a clear bell sound."). See also June 22, 1851 ("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 crys tal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves . All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps .. . . Whom shall I thank for it ? . . . I feel my Maker blessing me ")

What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow See 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. The important fact is its effect on me. He thinks that I have no business to see anything else but just what he defines the rainbow to be, but I care not whether my vision of truth is a waking thought or dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or in the dark. It is the subject of the vision, the truth alone, that concerns me. The philosopher for whom rainbows, etc., can be explained away never saw them. With regard to such objects, I find that it is not they themselves (with which the men of science deal) that concern me; the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i. e. the objects)")

Thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. See March 15. 1859 ("Two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year."); August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow. "); August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty. It was designed to impress man."); August 7, 1852 ("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.") and note to May 11, 1854 ("A rainbow on the brow of summer")

Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet. See June 21, 1855 ("Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm.")

Unquestionable truth is sweet. See  August 8, 1852 ("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.”); November 1, 1857 ("A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed.")

The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. See  June 3, 1852 (“It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening.”) and note to June 8, 1859 ("See lightning-bugs to-night”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies


June 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 22

Is not the rainbow 

a faint vision of God's face –

a clear bell his voice?

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face?

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-520622

Two brilliant rainbows at sunset

March 15. 

Rainy day and southerly wind. I come home in the evening through a very heavy rain after two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15. 1859

See March 13, 1855 ("Rainbow in east this morning. ") and note to April 9, 1855 ("In the afternoon it rained, but the sun set clear,. . .producing the first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning.")

Overtaken by a shower

August 17. 

Still hear the chip-bird early in the morning, though not so generally as earlier in the season. 

Minott has only lately been reading Shattuck’s “History of Concord,” and he says that his account is not right by a jugful, that he does not come within half a mile of the truth, not as he has heard tell. 

Some days ago I saw a kingbird twice stoop to the water from an overhanging oak and pick an insect from the surface. 

C. saw pigeons to-day. 

P. M. —To Annursnack via swimming-ford. 

The river is twelve to eighteen inches deeper there than usual at this season. Even the slough this side is two feet deep. There has been so much rain of late that there is no curling or drying of the leaves and grass this year. The foliage is a pure fresh green. The aftermath on early mown fields is a very beautiful green. 

Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us. 

The dog-days, the foggy and mouldy days, are not over yet. The clouds are like a mildew which over  spreads the sky. It is sticky weather, and the air is filled with the scent of decaying fungi.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 17, 1858

Still hear the chip-bird early in the morning, though not so generally as earlier in the season.See August 1, 1853 ("I think that that universal crowing of the chip-bird in the morning is no longer heard.")

Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us. See July 22, 1858 (“C. and I took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. . . .Left a little too soon, but enjoyed a splendid rainbow for half an hour.”)

Refuge from a shower.

July 22. 

July 22, 2018

The nest of the marsh hawk is empty. It has probably flown. 

C. and I took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. A thunderbolt fell close by. A mole ran under the boat. The wind canted round as usual (is not this owing to the circular manner of storms?) more easterly, and compelled us to turn the boat over. 

Left a little too soon, but enjoyed a splendid rainbow for half an hour.

July 22, 2018

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1858

C. and I took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. See June 14, 1855 (“It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, and so are quite dry while our friends thought we were being wet to our skins. But we have as good a roof as they. It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble”)

A splendid rainbow for half an hour. See April 18, 1855 ("Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow.”); August 17, 1858 (“Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us.”)

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

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 rainbow in the west this morning.

June 30. 

June 30, 2018

Succory on the bank under my window, probably from flowers I have thrown out within a year or two. 

A rainbow in the west this morning. 

Hot weather.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, June 30, 1853

A rainbow in the west this morning. See June 25, 1852 (“Just as the sun rises this morning, under clouds, I see a rainbow in the west horizon, the lower parts quite bright.”)

Hot weather. See note to June 30, 1855 ("Thermometer north side of house, 95°")

June 30, 2018

Overtaken by a sudden sun-shower.

April 18.

6 A. M. —See and hear tree sparrows, and hear hyemalis still. 

Rained last evening and was very dark. Fair this morning and warm. White-bellied swallows and martins twitter now at 9 A. M. 

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden and Hubbard’s Close. 

Almost did without a fire this morning. Coming out, I find it very warm, warmer than yesterday or any day yet. It is a reminiscence of past summers. 

It is perfectly still and almost sultry, with wet-looking clouds hanging about, and from time to time hiding the sun. First weather of this kind. 

And as I sit on Fair Haven Hill-side, the sun actually burns my cheek; yet I left some fire in the house, not knowing behind a window how warm it was. 

The hillside and especially low bank-sides are now conspicuously green. The flooded meadows and river are smooth, and just enough in shadow for reflections. 

The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool. Robins are singing and peeping, and jays are screaming. 

I see one or two smokes in the horizon. I can still see the mountains slightly spotted with snow. The frost is out enough for plowing probably in most open ground. 

When I reach the top of the hill, I see suddenly all the southern horizon (east or south from Bear Hill in Waltham to the river) full of a mist, like a dust, already concealing the Lincoln hills and producing distinct wreaths of vapor, the rest of the horizon being clear. Evidently a sea-turn, — a wind from over the sea, condensing the moisture in our warm atmosphere and putting another aspect on the face of things. 

All this I see and say long before I feel the change, while still sweltering on the rocks, for the heat is oppressive. 

Nature cannot abide this sudden heat, but calls for her fan. In ten minutes I hear a susurrus in the shrub oak leaves at a distance, and soon an agreeable fresh air washes these warm rocks, and some mist surrounds me. 

A low blackberry on the rocks is now expanding its leaves just after the gooseberry. A little sallow, about two feet high and apparently intermediate between tristis and the next, with reddish anthers not yet burst, will bloom to-morrow in Well Meadow Path. 

The shad-bush flower-buds, beginning to expand, look like leaf-buds bursting now.  

Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow. In the evening hear far and wide the ring of toads, and a thunder-shower with its lightning is seen and heard in the west.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1855


The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool. See April 18, 1857 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird”); .April 18, 1859 ("Hear a field sparrow."); April 18, 1856 ("This evening I hear the snipes generally and peeping of hylas from the door."); April 9, 1856 (“This degree of heat, then, brings the Fringilla juncorum and pine warbler and awakes the hyla.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Field Sparrow(Fringilla juncorum)

Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow. See  March 13, 1855 ("Rainbow in east this morning."); April 9, 1855 ("With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter?");May 11, 1854 ("A rainbow on the brow of summer.")

In the evening hear far and wide the ring of toads. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The ring of toads

At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song.

April 9

5.15 A. M. —To Red Bridge just before sunrise. 

Fine clear morning, but still cold enough for gloves. A slight frost, and mist as yesterday curling over the smooth water. 

April 9, 2025

I see half a dozen crows on an elm within a dozen rods of the muskrats’ bodies, as if eyeing them. I see thus often crows very early in the morning near the houses, which soon after sun rise take their way across the river to the woods again. It is a regular thing with them. 

Hear the hoarse rasping chuck or chatter of crow blackbirds and distinguish their long broad tails. Wilson says that the only note of the rusty grackle is a chuck, though he is told that at Hudson’s Bay, at the breeding-time, they sing with a fine note. Here they utter not only a chuck, but a fine shrill whistle. 

They cover the top of a tree now, and their concert is of this character: They all seem laboring together to get out a clear strain, as it were wetting their whistles against their arrival at Hudson’s Bay. They begin as it were by disgorging or spitting it out, like so much tow, from a full throat, and conclude with a clear, fine, shrill, ear-piercing whistle. Then away they go, all chattering together. 

Hear a phoebe near the river. 

The golden willow is, methinks, a little livelier green and begins to peel a little, but I am not sure the bark is any smoother yet.

Hear a loud, long, dry, tremulous shriek which reminded me of a kingfisher, but which I find proceeded from a woodpecker that had just alighted on an elm; also its clear whistle or Chink afterward. It is probably the hairy woodpecker, and I am not so certain I have seen it earlier this year. Wilson does not allow that the downy one makes exactly such a sound. 

Did I hear part of the note of a golden-crowned wren this morning? It was undoubtedly a robin, the last part of his strain. 

Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe. 

The forenoon was cloudy and in the afternoon it rained, but the sun set clear, lighting up the west with a yellow light, which there was no green grass to reflect, in which the frame of a new building is distinctly seen, while drops hang on every twig, and producing the first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning. 

With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter? Is the fact that the clouds are then of snow commonly, instead of rain, sufficient to account for it?

At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song.

MacGillivray says that divers, mergansers, and cormorants actually fly under water, using their wings fully expanded. He had seen them pursuing sand eels along the shores of the Hebrides. Had seen the water ouzel fly in like manner. 

Several flocks of geese went over this morning also. Now, then, the main body are moving. Now first are they generally seen and heard.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, April 9, 1855

Still cold enough for gloves. See April 10, 1855 ("Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning"); April 22, 1855 ("Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or ten days.")

 
Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe. See April 9, 1853 (“Evening. -- Hear the snipe a short time at early starlight.”); April 9, 1858 ("This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe

A clear, fine, shrill, ear-piercing whistle. See April 3, 1855 ("The first grackles [rusty grackles, or rusty blackbirds.] I have seen. I detected them first by their more rasping note . . . after a short stuttering, then a fine, clear whistle.")

Several flocks of geese went over this morning also.  See April 8, 1855 ("This evening, about 9 P.M., I hear geese go over . . . The first I have heard.  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

 The first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning. See February 23, 1860 ("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."); March 13, 1855 ("Rainbow in east this morning."); March 15. 1859 ("two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year."); April 18, 1855 ("Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow.”); December 6, 1858 ("Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light.")

 

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

The golden willow  

begins to peel a little –

a livelier green.

Sunset after rain

the robins and song sparrows

fill the air with song.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, At sunset after the rain

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

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