Do it well

What is that lyric I am reminded of?

It’s Buckets of Rain, by Bob Dylan:

Life is sad

Life is a bust

All ya can do is do what you must

You do what you must do 

              and ya do it well

Rosanne Cash interviewed by Scott Simon in January 2024 said “I have this thing I wrote in my old datebook. I actually saw yesterday which said (paraphrasing Gandhi)

"what you do will be insignificant, but it’s essential that you do it.” *

 

And here is Antonio Machado –

Slowly form nice neat letters; 

doing things well 

is more important than doing them. 

(Proverb XXI )

Of course it all comes from Aristotle –

“. . . human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue . . .”

In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle explains that happiness is the highest good is (Greek eudaimonia, literally meaning ‘good spirits’), and that living and doing well are the same as being happy. Eudaimonia  is “excellence of performing the proper function.” – doing things well.

As Thoreau says: The motive of the laborer should be not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work. ~ June 15, 1852

Do the things which lie 

nearest to you – but which are 

difficult to do.

January 12, 1852

You do what you must do 

             and ya do it well.

~ Zphx

See note to A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, What we do best or most perfectly ("What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice.")

*Here is the quote from Gandhi:

“Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, 

but it is important that you do it.”

Even the ox can be weary with toil.

December 26

 December 26, 2017

I observed this afternoon that when Edmund Hosmer came home from sledding wood and unyoked his oxen, they made a business of stretching and scratching themselves with their horns and rubbing against the posts, and licking themselves in those parts which the yoke had prevented their reaching all day.

The human way in which they behaved affected me even pathetically. They were too serious to be glad that their day's work was done; they had not spirits enough left for that. They behaved as a tired woodchopper might.

This was to me a new phase in the life of the laboring ox.

It is painful to think how they may sometimes be overworked. I saw that even the ox could be weary with toil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1851

To be glad that their day's work was done. See  June 22, 1851 ("After a hard day's work without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day."); July 12, 1851 ("I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil"); June 25, 1852 ("Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour. Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! "); April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light."); See also John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 24, 1869 ("A very hard day's work has been done. At evening I sit on a rock by the edge of the river, to look at the water, and listen to its roar.")

Even the ox could be weary with toil. See April 2, 1860 ("The ox, tired with his day's work, is compelled to take his rest, like the most wretched slave")

The year is in its manhood now.

June 15.

Tuesday. Silene Antirrhina, sleepy catch-fly, or snapdragon catch-fly, the ordinarily curled-up petals scarcely noticeable at the end of the large oval calyx. Gray says opening only by night or cloudy weather. Bigelow says probably nocturnal, for he never found it expanded by day. (I found it June 16th at 6 a. m. expanded, two of its flowers, — and they remained so for some hours, in my chamber.) 

By railroad near Badger's. 

Yesterday we smelt the sea strongly; the sea breeze alone made the day tolerable. 

This morning, a shower! The robin only sings the louder for it. He is inclined to sing in foul weather. 

To Clematis Brook, 1.30 p. m. Very warm. Now for a thin coat. This melting weather makes a stage in the year. 

The crickets creak louder and more steadily; the bullfrogs croak in earnest. 

The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard. 

The potatoes are of that height to stand up at night.

Bathing cannot be omitted. The conversation of all boys in the streets is whether they will or not or who will go in a-swimming, and how they will not tell their parents. You lie with open windows and hear the sounds in the streets.

The seringo sings now at noon on a post; has a light streak over eye.

The autumnal dandelion (Leontodon, or Apargia). Erigeron integrifolius of Bigelow (strigosus, i. e. narrow- leaved daisy fleabane, of Gray) very common, like a white aster. I will note such birds as I observe in this walk, beginning on the railroad causeway in middle of this hot day.

The chuckling warble of martins heard over the meadow, from a village box. The lark. 

The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. The epilobium shows some color in its spikes. 

How rapidly new flowers unfold! as if Nature would get through her work too soon. One has as much as he can do to observe how flowers successively unfold.

It is a flowery revolution, to which but few attend. Hardly too much attention can be bestowed on flowers. We follow, we march after, the highest color; that is our flag, our standard, our "color." 

Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes, spectators. 

There have been many flower men who have rambled the world over to see them. The flowers robbed from an Egyptian traveller were at length carefully boxed up and forwarded to Linnaeus, the man of flowers. 

The common, early cultivated red roses are certainly very handsome, so rich a color and so full of blossoms; you see why even blunderers have introduced them into their gardens. 

Ascending to pigeon-place plain, the reflection of the heat from the dead pine-needles and the boughs strewn about, combined with the dry, suffocating scent, is oppressive and reminds me of the first settlers of Concord.

The oven-bird, chewink, pine warbler (?), thrasher, swallows on the wire, cuckoo, phoebe, red eye, robin, veery. 

The maple-leaved viburnum is opening with a purplish tinge. 

Wood thrush. 

Is not that the Prunus obovata, which I find in fruit, a mere shrub, in Laurel Glen, with oval fruit and long pedicels in a raceme? And have I not mistaken the P. Virginiana, or northern red cherry, for this? 

Vide Virginiana and also vide the P. depressa. 

Golden and coppery reflections from a yellow dor-bug's coat of mail in the water. 

Is it a yellowbird or myrtle-bird? 

Huckleberry-bird. 

Walden is two inches above my last mark. It must be four or five feet, at least, higher than when I sounded it. 

Men are inclined to be amphibious, to sympathize with fishes, now. I desire to get wet and saturated with water. 

The North River, Assabet, by the old stone bridge, affords the best bathing-place I think of, — a pure sandy, uneven bottom, — with a swift current, a grassy bank, and overhanging maples, with transparent water, deep enough, where you can see every fish in it. Though you stand still, you feel the rippling current about you. 

First locust. 

The pea-wai. 

There is considerable pollen on the pond; more than last year, notwithstanding that all the white pines near the pond are gone and there are very few pitch. It must all come from the pitch pine, whose sterile blossoms are now dry and empty, for it is earlier than the white pine. Probably I have never observed it in the river because it is carried away by the current.

The umbellefl pyrola is just ready to bloom. 

Young robins, dark-speckled, and the pigeon woodpecker flies up from the ground and darts away. 

I forget that there are lichens at this season. 

The farmhouses under their shady trees (Baker's) look as if the inhabitants were taking their siesta at this hour. I pass it  in the rear, through the open pitch pine wood. 

Why does work go forward now? No scouring of tubs or cans now. The cat and all are gone to sleep, preparing for an early tea, excepting the indefatigable, never-resting hoers in the corn-field, who have carried a jug of molasses and water to the field and will wring their shirts to-night.

I shall ere long hear the horn blow for their early tea. The wife or the hired Irish woman steps to the door and blows the long tin horn, a cheering sound to the laborers in the field. 

The motive of the laborer should be not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work. 

A town must pay its engineers so well that they shall not feel that they are working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific ends. 

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well. 

On Mt. Misery, panting with heat, looking down the river. The haze an hour ago reached to Wachusett; now it obscures it. 

Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy. Have not all streams this contrast more or less, on the one hand eating into the bank, on the other depositing their sediment? 

The year is in its manhood now. 

The very river looks warm, and there is none of that light celestial blue seen in far reaches in the spring. I see fields a mile distant reddened with sorrel. The very sight of distant water is refreshing, though a bluish steam appears to rest on it. 

Catbird. 

The waxwork is just in blossom and groves [of] hickories on the south of Mt. Misery. How refreshing the sound of the smallest waterfall in hot [weather]

I sit by that on Clematis Brook and listen to its music. The very sight of this half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it, is agreeable and encouraging to behold, as if it contained the seeds of life, the liquor rather, boiled down. The foulest water will bubble purely. 

They speak to our blood, even these stagnant, slimy pools. It, too, no doubt, has its falls nobler than Montmorenci, grander than Niagara, in the course of its circulations. 

Here is the primitive force of Egypt and the Nile, where the lotus grows. 

Some geraniums are quite rose-colored, others pale purplish-blue, others whitish. 

The blossom of the Zentago is rather sweet smelling.

Orobanche uniflora, sin gle-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray), grows by this brook-side, — a naked, low, bluish-white flower, even re minding you of the tobacco-pipe. 

Cattle walk along in a brook or ditch now for coolness, lashing their tails, and browse the edges; or they stand concealed for shade amid thick bushes. How perfectly acquainted they are with man, and never run from him! 

Thorn bushes appear to be just out of blossom. I have not observed them well. 

Woodchucks and squirrels are seen and heard in a walk. 

How much of a tortoise is shell! But little is gone with its spirit. It is well cleaned out, I trust. It is emptied of the reptile. It is not its exuviae. 

I hear the scream of a great hawk, sailing with a ragged wing against the high wood-side, apparently to scare his prey and so detect it, — r- shrill, harsh, fitted to excite terror in sparrows and to issue from his split and curved bill. I see his open bill the while against the sky. Spit with force from his mouth with an undulatory quaver imparted to it from his wings or motion as he flies. A hawk's ragged wing will grow whole again, but so will not a poet's. 

By half past five, robins more than before, crows, of course, and jays. 

Dogsbane is just ready to open. 

Swallows. 

It is pleasant walking through the June-grass (in Pleasant Meadow), so thin and offering but little obstruction. 

The nighthawk squeaks and booms. 

The Veratrum viride top is now a handsome green cluster, two feet by ten inches. 

Here also, at Well Meadow Head, I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful, though a pale lilac purple, — a large spike of purple flowers. 

I find two, — the grandiflora of Bigelow and fimbriata of Gray. Bigelow thinks it the most beautiful of all the orchises. 

I am not prepared to say it is the most beautiful wild flower I have found this year. Why does it grow there only, far in a swamp, remote from public view? It is somewhat fragrant, reminding me of the lady's-slipper. 

Is it not significant that some rare and delicate and beautiful flowers should be found only in unfrequented wild swamps? There is the mould in which the orchis grows. Yet I am not sure but this is a fault in the flower. It is not quite perfect in all its parts. 

A beautiful flower must be simple, not spiked. It must have a fair stem and leaves. 

This stem is rather naked, and the leaves are for shade and moisture. It is fairest seen rising from amid brakes and hellebore, its lower part or rather naked stem concealed. 

Where the most beautiful wild-flowers grow, there man's spirit is fed, and poets grow. It cannot be high-colored, growing in the shade. Nature has taken no pains to exhibit [it], and few that bloom are ever seen by mortal eyes. 

The most striking and handsome large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have seen. 

Disturbed a company of tree-toads amid the bushes. They seemed to bewilder the passer by their croaking; when he went toward one, he was silent, and another sounded on the other side. 

The hickory leaves are fra grant as I brush past them. 

Quite a feast of strawberries on Fair Haven, — the upland strawberry. The largest and sweetest on sand. The first fruit. 

The night-warbler. 

There are few really cold springs. I go out of my way to go by the Boiling Spring. How few men can be believed when they say the spring is cold! There is one cold as the coldest well water. What a treasure is such a spring! Who divined it? 

The cistuses are all closed. Is it because of the heat, and will they be open in the morning? 

C. found common hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum officinale) by railroad. 

8 p. m. — On river. No moon. 

A deafening sound from the toads, and intermittingly from bullfrogs. What I have thought to be frogs prove to be toads, sitting by thousands along the shore and trilling short and loud, — not so long a quaver as in the spring, — and I have not heard them in those pools, now, indeed, mostly dried up, where I heard them in the spring. (I do not know what to think of my midsummer frog now.) 

The bullfrogs are very loud, of various degrees of baseness and sonorousness, answering each other across the river with two or three grunting croaks. They are not nearly so numerous as the toads. 

It is candle-light. The fishes leap. 

The meadows sparkle with the coppery light of fireflies. The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, is like bright sparks of fire continually ascending. 

The reflections of the trees are grandly indistinct.

There is a low mist slightly enlarging the river, through which the arches of the stone bridge are' just visible, as a vision. The mist is singularly bounded, collected here, while there is none there; close up to the bridge on one side and none on the other, depending apparently on currents of air. A dew in the air for it is, which in time will wet you through. 

See stars reflected in the bottom of our boat, it being a quarter full of water. There is a low crescent of northern light and shooting stars from time to time. 

(We go only from Channing's to the ash above the railroad.) I paddle with a bough, the Nile boatman's oar, which is rightly pliant, and you do not labor much. Some dogs bay. A sultry night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1852

The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard. See June 14, 1853 ("Heard the first locust from amid the shrubs by the roadside. He comes with heat.")

The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven."); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height.")

Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy.See July 19, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, while it may be encroaching on the bank on one side, preserves its ordinary breadth by filling up the other side") See also August 7, 1858 ("The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. “); August 15, 1858 (“I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly.”); July 5, 1859 ("The deepest part of the river is generally rather toward one side, especially where the stream is energetic. On a curve it is generally deepest on the inside bank, and the bank most upright.")

The year is in its manhood now. See June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood."); June 15, 1853 ("The rude health of the sorrel cheek has given place to the blush of clover.")

I see fields a mile distant reddened with sorrel. See  note to June 12, 1859 ("I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)


I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful. See note to June 20, 1859 ("Great purple fringed orchis")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes, spectators. See August 22, 1852 ("Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry and the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them.”); March 18, 1860 (“There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. . . .No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring.”)

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well. See December 12, 1859("Every man, and the woodchopper among the rest, should love his work as much as the poet does his."); March 31, 1842 ("The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work , but will saunter to his task sur- rounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure . . .Those who work much do not work hard."). See also Do it Well

The night comes on early these days

December 12

P. M. — To Pine Hill and round Walden. 

Seeing a little hole in the side of a dead white birch, about six feet from the ground, I broke it off and found it to be made where a rotten limb had broken off. The hole was about an inch over and was of quite irregular and probably natural outline, and, within, the rotten wood had been removed to the depth of two or three inches, and on one side of this cavity, under the hole, was quite a pile of bird-droppings. The bottom was an irregular surface of the rotten wood, and there was nothing like a nest. The diameter of the birch was little more than two inches, — if at all. 

Probably it was the roosting-place of a chickadee.  

There is a certain Irish woodchopper who, when I come across him at his work in the woods in the winter, never fails to ask me what time it is, as if he were in haste to take his dinner-pail and go home. This is not as it should be. 

Every man, and the woodchopper among the rest, should love his work as much as the poet does his. All good political arrangements proceed on this supposition. If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rotteneness at the foundation of our community.

December 12, 2013

The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky. 

The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice. 

So, perchance, if a still finer substance should fall from heaven (iodine ?), something delicate enough to receive the trace of their footsteps, we should see where unsuspected spirits and faery visitors had hourly crossed our steps, had held conventions and transacted their affairs in our midst. No doubt such subtle spirits transact their affairs in our midst, and we may perhaps in vent some sufficiently delicate surface to catch the impression of them. 

If in the winter there are fewer men in the fields and woods, — as in the country generally, — you see the tracks of those who had preceded you, and so are more reminded of them than in summer. 

As I talked with the woodchopper who had just cleared the top of Emerson's I got a new view of the mountains over his pile of wood in the foreground. They were very grand in their snowy mantle, which had a slight tinge of purple. But when afterward I looked at them from a higher hill, where there was no wood pile in the foreground, they affected me less. It is now that these mountains, in color as well as form, most resemble the clouds.

I am inclined to think of late that as much depends on the state of the bowels as of the stars. As are your bowels, so are the stars.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 12, 1859

Probably it was the roosting-place of a chickadee. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

Every man, and the woodchopper among the rest, should love his work as much as the poet does his. See Walden, An artist in the city of Kouroo ("in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, "); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. . . . The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); November 20, 1851("Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man"); December 13, 1851 ("This varied employment, to which my necessities compel me, serves instead of foreign travel and the lapse of time."); June 15, 1852 ("Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well."); April 8, 1854 ("A day or two surveying is equal to a journey");April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work, and am somewhat listless or abandoned after it, reposing, that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light."); April 30, 1856 (" You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.")

The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky. See December 3, 1856 ("For years my appetite was so strong that I fed — I browsed — on the pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon"); December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night”); December 10, 1856 (“How short the afternoons! I hardly get out a couple of miles before the sun is setting”); December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day");  December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour."); January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Season of Two Twilights

The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice. See November 18, 1855 ("The snow is the great track-revealer."); December 8, 1854 ("Already foxes have left their tracks.!"); December 8, 1855 ("Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected"); December 11, 1854 ("A partridge goes off, and, coming up, I see where she struck the snow first with her wing, making five or six as it were finger-marks."); December 13, 1859 ("I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me.");  December 14, 1855 ("By the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell."); December 19, 1850 ("Yesterday I tracked a partridge in the new-fallen snow, till I came to where she took to flight, and I could track her no further. "):December 27, 1853 ("It is surprising what things the snow betrays . . . no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals.")

[In the winter] you see the tracks of those who had preceded you, and so are more reminded of them than in summer. See November 15, 1858 ("You are now reminded occasionally in your walks that you have contemporaries, and perchance predecessors. I see the track of a fox . . . and, in the wood-path, of a man and a dog."); November 28, 1858 ("I cannot now walk without leaving a track behind me; that is one peculiarity of winter walking. Anybody may follow my trail. I have walked, perhaps, a particular wild path along some swamp-side all summer, and thought to myself, I am the only villager that ever comes here. But I go out shortly after the first snow has fallen, and lo, here is the track of a sportsman and his dog in my secluded path, and probably he preceded me in the summer as well."); December 7, 1856 ("I see the track of one skater who has preceded me this morning.")

In their snowy mantle, which had a slight tinge of purple . . . It is now that these mountains, in color as well as form, most resemble the clouds. See December 12, 1852 ("From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains. Last night's rain was snow there"); see also October 13, 1852 (" The air is singularly fine-grained; the mountains are more distinct from the rest of the earth and slightly purple."); ); October 20, 1852 (“I see the mountains in sunshine, all the more attractive from the cold I feel here, with a tinge of purple on them”);; November 4, 1857 ("The mountains north . . . stand out grand and distinct, a decided purple."). November 30, 1852 (" the sparkling windows and vanes of the village, seen under and against the faintly purple-tinged, slate-colored mountains ")

December 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 12

Night comes on early –

pine tree tops outlined against 

the cold western sky.

It is now mountains

have a slight tinge of purple –

resembling the clouds.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The night comes on early these days

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-591212

A striking symmetry in the heavens.

November  20

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 than the sounds which I should hear if I were below in the parlor, because they are so much purer and diviner melody. 

They who sit farthest off from the noisy and bustling world are not at pains to distinguish what is sweet and musical, for that alone can reach them; that chiefly comes down to posterity. 

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly. Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening, somewhat weary at last, and beginning to feel that I have nerves, I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry. The very air can intoxicate me, or the least sight or sound, as if my finer senses had acquired an appetite by their fast. 

As I was riding to the Ministerial Lot this morning, about 8.30 a. m., I observed that the white clouds were disposed raywise in the west and also in the east, — as if the sun's rays had split and so arranged them? A striking symmetry in the heavens. What its law? 

Mr. J. Hosmer tells me that one spring he saw a red squirrel gnaw the bark of a maple and then suck the juice, and this he repeated many times. 

What is the bush where we dined in Poplar Hollow? 

Hosmer:

• tells of finding a kind of apple, with an apple seed (?) to it, on scabish which had been injured or cut off. 

• Thinks plowed ground more moist than grass ground. 

• That there are more leaves on the ground on the north side of a hill than on the other sides, and that the trees thrive more there, perhaps because the winds cause the leaves to fall there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  November 20, 1851

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man. See November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. . . . The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work, and am somewhat listless or abandoned after it, reposing, that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light."); April 30, 1856 (" You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.”)

Those strains of the piano which reach me here in my attic stir me so much more than the sounds which I should hear if I were below in the parlor See 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, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”); January 27, 1857 ("Hear music below. It washes the dust off my life and everything I look at.") See also note to January 15, 1857 ("What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps?")

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man See November 18 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.") and note to April 12, 1854 ("It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light. ")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 20

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

My life flows with a deeper current.

August 17

haymakers

For a day or two it has been quite cool, a coolness that was felt even when sitting by an open window in a thin coat on the west side of the house in the morning, and you naturally sought the sun at that hour. The coolness concentrated your thought, however. As I could not command a sunny window, I went abroad on the morning of the 15th and lay in the sun in the fields in my thin coat, though it was rather cool even there. I feel as if this coolness would do me good. 

If it only makes my life more pensive! 

Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. It saves my life from being trivial. 

My life flows with a deeper current, no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and shrunken by the summer heats. This coolness comes to condense the dews and clear the atmosphere. The stillness seems more deep and significant. Each sound seems to come from out a greater thoughtfulness in nature, as if nature had acquired some character and mind. The cricket, the gurgling stream, the rushing wind amid the trees, all speak to me soberly yet encouragingly of the steady onward progress of the universe. 

My heart leaps into my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods. I, whose life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing. 

I see a goldfinch go twittering through the still, louring day, and am reminded of the peeping flocks which will soon herald the thoughtful season. Ah! if I could so live that there should be no desultory moment in all my life! that in the trivial season, when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also! that I could match nature always with my moods ! that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish! 

Ah, I would walk, I would sit and sleep, with natural piety ! What if I could pray aloud or to myself as I went along by the brooksides a cheerful prayer like the birds ! For joy I could embrace the earth; I shall delight to be buried in it. 

And then to think of those I love among men, who will know that I love them though I tell them not! I some times feel as if I were rewarded merely for expecting better hours. I did not despair of worthier moods, and now I have occasion to be grateful for the flood of life that is flowing over me. 

I am not so poor: I can smell the ripening apples; the very rills are deep; the autumnal flowers, the Trichostema dichotomum, — not only its bright blue flower above the sand, but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season, — feed my spirit, endear the earth to me, make me value myself and rejoice; the quivering of pigeons' wings reminds me of the tough fibre of the air which they rend. 

I thank you, God. I do not deserve anything, I am unworthy of the least regard; and yet I am made to rejoice. I am impure and worthless, and yet the world is gilded for my delight and holidays are prepared for me, and my path is strewn with flowers. 

But I cannot thank the Giver; I cannot even whisper my thanks to those human friends I have. It seems to me that I am more rewarded for my expectations than for anything I do or can do. Ah, I would not tread on a cricket in whose song is such a revelation, so soothing and cheering to my ear! 

Oh, keep my senses pure! And why should I speak to my friends? for how rarely is it that I am I; and are they, then, they? We will meet, then, far away. The seeds of the summer are getting dry and falling from a thousand nodding heads. If I did not know you through thick and thin, how should I know you at all? 

Ah, the very brooks seem fuller of reflections than they were! Ah, such provoking sibylline sentences they are! The shallowest is all at once unfathomable. How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected? 

The rill I stopped to drink at I drink in more than I expected. I satisfy and still provoke the thirst of thirsts. 

Nut Meadow Brook where it crosses the road beyond Jenny Dugan's that was. I do not drink in vain. I mark that brook as if I had swallowed a water snake that would live in my stomach. I have swallowed something worth the while. The day is not what it was before I stooped to drink. Ah, I shall hear from that draught! It is not in vain that I have drunk. 

I have drunk an arrowhead. It flows from where all fountains rise. How many ova have I swallowed? Who knows what will be hatched within me? There were some seeds of thought, methinks, floating in that water, which are expanding in me. 

The man must not drink of the running streams, the living waters, who is not prepared to have all nature reborn in him, — to suckle monsters. 

The snake in my stomach lifts his head to my mouth at the sound of running water. When was it that I swallowed a snake? I have got rid of the snake in my stomach. I drank of stagnant waters once. That accounts for it. I caught him by the throat and drew him out, and had a well day after all. Is there not such a thing as getting rid of the snake which you have swallowed when young, when thoughtless you stooped and drank at stagnant waters, which has worried you in your waking hours and in your sleep ever since, and appropriated the life that was yours? Will he not ascend into your mouth at the sound of running water? Then catch him boldly by the head and draw him out, though you may think his tail be curled about your vitals. 

The farmers are just finishing their meadow-haying. (To-day is Sunday.) Those who have early potatoes may be digging them, or doing any other job which the haying has obliged them to postpone. For six weeks or more this has been the farmer's work, to shave the surface of the fields and meadows clean. This is done all over the country. The razor is passed over these parts of nature's face the country over. A thirteenth labor which methinks would have broken the back of Hercules, would have given him a memorable sweat, accomplished with what sweating of scythes and early and late! I chance know one young man who has lost his life in this season's campaign, by overdoing. In haying time some men take double wages, and they are engaged long before in the spring. To shave all the fields and meadows of New England clean ! If men did this but once, and not every year, we should never hear the last of that labor; it would be more famous in each farmer's case than Buonaparte's road over the Simplon. It has no other bulletin but the truthful "Farmer's Almanac." Ask them where scythe-snaths are made and sold, and rifles too, if it is not a real labor. In its very weapons and its passes it has the semblance of war. Mexico was won with less exertion and less true valor than are required to do one season's haying in New England. The former work was done by those who played truant and ran away from the latter. Those Mexicans were mown down more easily than the summer's crop of grass in many a farmer's fields. Is there not some work in New England men ? This haying is no work for marines, nor for deserters; nor for United States troops, so called, nor for West Point cadets. It would wilt them, and they would desert. Have they not deserted? and run off to West Point?

 Every field is a battle-field to the mower, — a pitched battle too, — and whole winrows of dead have covered it in the course of the season. Early and late the farmer has gone forth with his formidable scythe, weapon of time, Time's weapon, and fought the ground inch by inch. It is the summer's enterprise. And if we were a more poetic people, horns would be blown to celebrate its completion. There might be a Hay makers' Day. New England's peaceful battles. At Bunker Hill there were some who stood at the rail- fence and behind the winrows of new-mown hay.1 They have not yet quitted the field. They stand there still; they alone have not retreated. 


The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red or purple heads. 

The dandelion still blossoms, and the lupine still, belated. 

I have been to Tarbell's Swamp by the Second Division this afternoon, and to the Marlborough road. It has promised rain all day; cloudy and still and rather cool; from time to time a few drops gently spit ting, but no shower. The landscape wears a sober autumnal look. I hear a drop or two on my hat. I wear a thick coat. The birds seem to know that it will not rain just yet. The swallows skim low over the pastures, twittering as they fly near me with forked tail, dashing near me as if I scared up insects for them. I see where a squirrel has been eating hazelnuts on a stump. 

Tarbell's Swamp is mainly composed of low and even but dense beds of Andromeda calyculata, or dwarf andromeda, which bears the early flower in the spring. Here and there, mingled with it, is the water (?) andromeda; also pitch pines, birches, hardhack, and the common alder (Alnus serrulata), and, in separate and lower beds, the cranberry; and probably the Rhodora Canadensis might be found. The lead-colored berries of the Viburnum dentatum now. Cow -wheat and indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side, and Norway cinquefoil. 

I detected a wild apple on the Marlborough road by its fragrance, in the thick woods; small stems, four inches in diameter, falling over or leaning like rays on every side; a clean white fruit, the ripest yellowish, a pleasant acid. The fruit covered the ground. It is unusual to meet with an early apple thus wild in the thickest woods. It seemed admirable to me. One of the noblest of fruits. With green specks under the skin. 

Prenanthes alba, white-flowering prenanthes, with its strange halbert and variously shaped leaves; neottia; and hypericum. 

I hear the rain (11 p. m.) distilling upon the ground, wetting the grass and leaves. The melons needed it. Their leaves were curled and their fruit stinted. 

I am less somnolent for the cool season. I wake to a perennial day. 

The hayer's work is done, but I hear no boasting, no firing of guns nor ringing of bells. He celebrates it by going about the work he had postponed "till after haying"! If all this steadiness and valor were spent upon some still worthier enterprise!! 

All men's employments, all trades and professions, in some of their aspects are attractive. Hence the boy I resolved to be a minister and make cider, not thinking, boy as he was, how little fun there was in being a minister, willing to purchase that pleasure at any price. 

When I saw the carpenters the other day repairing Hubbard's Bridge, their bench on the new planking they had laid over the water in the sun and air, with no railing yet to obstruct the view, I was almost ready to resolve that I would be a carpenter and work on bridges, to secure a pleasant place to work. One of the men had a fish-line cast round a sleeper, which he looked at from time to time. 

John Potter told me that those root fences on the Corner road were at least sixty or seventy years old.

 I see a solitary goldfinch now and then. 

Hieracium Marianum or scabrum; H. Kalmii or Canadense; Marlborough road. Leontodon autumriale passim.

H. D.. Thoreau , Journal, August 17, 1851

I can smell the ripening apples. August 9, 1851 ("Now the earliest apples begin to be ripe, but none are so good to eat as some to smell.")

The Trichostema dichotomum [blue-curls], — not only its bright blue flower above the sand, but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season, -- feed my spirit. See  July 31, 1856 ("Trichostema has now for some time been springing up in the fields, giving out its aromatic scent when bruised, and I see one ready to open.");:August 9, 1851 ("The Trichostema dichotomum is quite beautiful now in the cool of the morning."); August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”); August 13, 1856 (“Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, . . . etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?“)

I thank you, God. . . .I am unworthy of the least regard; and yet I am made to rejoice. . . .the world is gilded for my delight and holidays are prepared for me, and my path is strewn with flowers. See June 22, 1851 ("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.")

When I saw the carpenters the other day repairing Hubbard's Bridge. See August 8, 1851 ("The planks and railing of Hubbard's Bridge are removed."); August 12, 1851 ("Sitting on the sleepers of Hubbard’s Bridge, which is being repaired, now, 3 o’clock A. M")

August 17. See   A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, August 17

Now to be grateful 

for the flood of life that is 

flowing over me. 

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

***

Aug. 17. For a day or two it has been quite cool, a coolness that was felt even when sitting by an open window in a thin coat on the west side of the house in the morning, and you naturally sought the sun at that hour.

 The coolness concentrated ,your thought, however.

 As 1 could not command a sunny window, I went abroad on the morning of the 15th and lay in the sun in the fields in my thin coat, though it was rather cool even there.

 I feel as if this coolness would do me good.

 If it only makes my life more pensive! 

Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness ? 

There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek.

 It is positively joyful to me.

 It saves my life from being trivial.

 My life flows with a deeper current, no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and shrunken by the summer heats.

 This coolness comes to condense the dews and clear the atmosphere.

 The stillness seems more deep and significant.

 Each sound seems to come from out a greater thoughtfulness in nature, as if nature: had acquired some character and mind.

 The cricket, the gurgling stream, the rushing wind amid the trees, all speak to me soberly yet encouragingly of the steady onward progress of the universe.

 My heart leaps into my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods.

 I, whose life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing.

 I see a goldfinch go twittering through the still, louring day, and am reminded of the peeping flocks which will soon herald the thoughtful season.

 Ah! if I could so live that there should be no desultory moment in all my life! that in the trivial season, when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might he ripe also! that I could match nature always with my moods! that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish!

 Ah, I would walk, I would sit and sleep, with natural piety! 

What if I could pray aloud or to myself as I went along by the brooksides a cheerful prayer like the birds!

For joy I could embrace the earth; I shall delight to be buried in it.

 And then to think of those I love among men, who will know that I love them though I tell them not!

I sometimes feel as if I were rewarded merely for expecting better hours.

 I did not despair of worthier moods, and now I have occasion to be grateful for the flood of life that is flowing over me.

 I am not so poor : I can smell the ripening apples; the very rills are deep; the autumnal flowers, the Trichostetna dichotomum, -not only its bright blue flower above the sand, but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season, - feed my spirit, endear the earth to me, make me value myself and rejoice; the quivering of pigeons' wings reminds me of the tough fibre of the air which they rend.

 I thank you, God.

 I do not deserve anything, I am unworthy of the least regard; and yet I am made to rejoice.

 I am impure and worthless, and yet the world is gilded for my delight and holidays are prepared for me, and my path is strewn with flowers.

 But I cannot thank the Giver; I cannot even whisper my thanks to those human friends I have.

 It seems to me that I am more rewarded for my expectations than for anything I do or can do.

 Ah, I would not tread on a cricket in whose song is such a revelation, so soothing and cheering to my car!

 Oh, keep my senses pure!

And why should I speak to my friends ? for how rarely is it that I am I; and are they, then, they? 

We will meet, then, far away.

 The seeds of the summer are getting dry and falling from a thousand nodding heads.

 If I did not know you through thick and thin, how should I know you at all ?

 Ah, the very brooks seem fuller of reflections than they were! 

Ah, such provoking sibylline sentences they are! 

The shallowest is all at once unfathomable.

 How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected ? 

The rill I stopped to drink at I drink in more than I expected.

 I satisfy and still provoke the thirst  of thirsts.

 Nut Meadow Brook where it crosses the road beyond Jenny Dugan's that was.

 I do not drink in vain.

 I mark that brook as if I had swallowed a water snake that would live in my stomach.

 I have swallowed something worth the while.

 The day is not what it was before I stooped to drink.

 Ah, I shall hear from that draught!

 It is not in vain that I have drunk.

 I have drunk an arrowhead.

 It flows from where all fountains rise.

 How many ova have I swallowed? 

Who knows what will be hatched within me? 

There were some seeds of thought, methinks, floating in that water, which are expanding in me.

 The man must not drink of the running streams, the living waters, who is not prepared to have all nature reborn in him, - to suckle monsters.

 The snake in my stomach lifts his head to my mouth at the sound of running water.

 When was it that I swallowed a snake? 

I have got rid of the snake in my stomach.

 I drank of stagnant waters once.

 That accounts for it.

 I caught him by the throat and drew him out, and had a well day after all.

 Is there not such a thing as getting rid of the snake which you have swallowed when young, when thoughtless you stooped and drank at stagnant waters, which has worried you in your waking hours and in your sleep ever since, and appropriated the life that was yours ? 

Will he not ascend into your mouth at the sound of running water- 

Then catch him boldly by the head and draw him out, though you may think his tail be curled about your vitals.

 The farmers are just finishing their meadow-haying.

 (To-day is Sunday.) 

Those who have early potatoes may be digging them, or doing any other job which the haying has obliged them to postpone.

 For six weeks or more this has been the farmer's work, to shave the surface of the fields and meadows clean.

 This is done all over the country.

 The razor is passed over these parts of nature's face the country over.

 A thirteenth labor which methinks would have broken the back of Hercules, would have given him a memorable sweat, accomplished with what sweating of scythes and early and late! I chance [to] know one young man who has lost his life in this season's campaign, by overdoing.

 In haying time some men take double wages, and they are engaged long before in the spring.

 To shave all the fields and meadows of New England clean! If men did this but once, and not every year, we should never hear the last of that labor ; it would be more famous in each farmer's case than Buonaparte's road over the Simplon.

 It has no other bulletin but the truthful "Farmer's Almanac.

" Ask them where scythe-snaths are made and sold, and rifles too, if it is not a real labor.

 In its very weapons and its passes it has the semblance of war.

 Mexico was won with less exertion and less true valor than are required to do one season's baying in New England.

 The former work was done by those who played truant and ran awav from the latter.

 Those Mexicans were mown dowT1 more easily than the summer's crop of grass in many a, Farmer's fields.

 Is there not some work in New England men` 

Haying is no work for marines, nor for deserters ; nor for United States troops, so called, nor for West Point cadets.

 It would wilt them, and they would desert.

 [lave they not deserted ? and run off to West Point?

Every field is a battle-field to the mower, - a pitched battle too, - and whole winrows of dead have covered it in the course of the season.

 Earlv and late the farmer has gone forth with his formidable scythe, weapon of time, Time's weapon, and fought the ground inch by inch.

 It is the summer's enterprise.

 And if we were a more poetic people, horns would be blown to celebrate its completion.

 There might be a Haymakers' Day.

 New England's peaceful battles.

 At Bunker Hill there were some who stood at the railfence and behind the winrows of new-mown hay.

' They have not yet quitted the field.

 They stand there still ; they alone have not retreated.

 The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red or purple heads.

 The dandelion still blossoms, and the lupine still, belated.

 I have been to Tarbell's Swamp by the Second Division this afternoon, and to the Marlborough road.

 It has promised rain all day ; cloudy and still and rather cool ; from time to time a few drops gently spitting, but no shower.

 The landscape wears a sober autumnal look.

 I hear a drop or two on my hat.

 I wear a thick coat.

 The birds seem to know that it will not rain just yet.

 The swallows skim low over the pastures, twittering as they fly near me with forked tail, dashing near me as if I scared up insects for them.

 I see where a squirrel has been eating hazelnuts on a stump.

 Tarbell's Swamp is mainly composed of low and even but dense beds of Andromeda calyculata, or dwarf a dromeda, which bears the *early flower in the spring.

 ' Stark and his companions met the enemy in the hay-field.

 Here and there, mingled with it, is the water (?) andromeda ; also pitch pines, birches, hardback, and the common alder (Alms serrulata), and, in separate and lower beds, the cranberry ; and probably the Rhodora Canadensis might be found.

 The lead-colored berries of the Viburnum dentatum now.

 Cow-wheat and indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side, and Norway cinquefoil.

 I detected a wild apple on the Marlborough road by its fragrance, in the thick woods ; small stems, four inches in diameter, falling over or leaning like rays on every side; a clean white fruit, the ripest yellowish, a pleasant acid.

 The fruit covered the ground.

 It is unusual to meet with an early apple thus wild in the thickest woods.

 It seemed admirable to me.

 One of the noblest of fruits.

 With green specks under the skin.

 Prenanthes alba, white-flowering prenanthes, with its strange halbert and variously shaped leaves ; neottia ; and hypericum.

 I hear the rain (11 P.M.) distilling upon the ground, wetting the grass and leaves.

 The melons needed it.

 Their leaves were curled and their fruit stinted.

 I am less somnolent for the cool season.

 I wake to a perennial day.

 The hayer's work is done, but I hear no boasting, no firing of guns nor ringing of bells.

 He celebrates it by going about the work he had postponed "till after haying"! 

If all this steadiness and valor were spent upon some still worthier enterprise!! 

All men's employments, mens trades and professions, in some of their aspects are attractive.

 Hence the boy I knew, having sucked cider at a minister's cider-mill, resolved to be a minister and make cider, not 'thinking, boy as he was, how little fun there was in being a minister, willing to purchase that pleasure at any price.

 When I saw the carpenters the other day repairing Hubbard's Bridge, their bench on the new planking they had laid over the water in the sun and air, with no railing yet to obstruct the view, I was almost ready to resolve that 1 would be a carpenter and work on bridges, to secure a pleasant place to work.

 One of the men had a fish-line cast round a sleeper, which he looked at from time to time.

 John Potter told me that those root fences on the Corner road were at least sixty or seventy years old.

 I see a solitary goldfinch now and then.

 Hieracium Marianum or scabrum ; H. Kalmii or Canadense ; Marlborough road. Leontodon autumnale passim.

***

 Coolness See September 2, 1851 ("The first coolness is welcome, so serious and fertile of thought.")

Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. See July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.");  August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now? — now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?); August 18, 1856 ("As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass.");August 19, 1851. "The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind,"); August 20, 1858 ("This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. ");August 28, 1851 ("The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods."); March 12, 1852 ("The whistling of the wind, which makes one melancholy, inspires another.")