The mosses now are in fruit - or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae.
Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a moderately, cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. We have almost completely forgotten summer. This has truly been a month of crusted snow. Now the snow-patches, which partially melt one part of the day or week, freeze at another, so that the walker traverses them with tolerable ease.
Cross the river on ice. Near Tarbell's and Harrington's the North Branch has burst its icy fetters. This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. As I stand looking up it westward for half a mile where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up with a fine-grained silvery sparkle. If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope?
To-night a circle round the moon.
H. D Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1852
The mosses now are in fruit. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green
This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. . . .shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? See March 20, 1853 ("The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice in vain till it slides on to the living water surface where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore. . . .")
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