Saturday, October 26, 2013

Reflected moods of the seasons.

October 26, 2019

It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us.  
You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. 

When I meet with any such in my Journal, it affects me as poetry.  I appreciate that other season and that particular phenomenon more than at the time. Only the rarest flower, the purest melody, of the season thus comes down to us. 

April 26, 2021
(What we should have called
a warm day in March is a
cold one at this date.

The world so seen is all one spring, and full of beauty. 

As I go up the back road, see fresh sprouts in bloom on a tall rough goldenrod. 

The dense maple swamp against Potter's pasture is completely bare, and the ground is very thickly strewn with leaves, which conceal the wet places. 

October 26, 2018

Now leaves are off, or chiefly off, I begin to notice the buds of various form and color and more or less conspicuous, prepared for another season, — partly, too, perhaps, for food for birds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1853

It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. See May 10, 1852 ("We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then.”); April 7, 1853 ("If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged.”); August 24, 1852 (“The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each day which, summed up, would be the history of the year.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

The dense maple swamp against Potter's pasture is completely bare, and the ground is very thickly strewn with leaves.
See October 4, 1857 ("At Potter's Swamp, where they are all maples, it adds to the beauty of the maple swamp at this season that it is not seen as a simple mass of color, but, different trees being of different tints, – green, yellow, scarlet, crimson, and different shades of each, – the out line of each tree is distinct to where one laps on to another."); October 22, 1855 ("In Potter’s maple swamp, where the red maple leaves lie in thick beds on the ground, what a strong mustiness, even sourness in some places! Yet I like this scent. With the present associations, sweet to me is the mustiness of the grave itself."); November 5, 1855 ("Walk through Potter’s Swamp. The brightness of the foliage generally ceased pretty exactly with October.")

I begin to notice the buds. See October 12, 1858 ("The leaves of the azaleas are falling, mostly fallen, and revealing the large blossom-buds, so prepared are they for another year."): October 25, 1858 ("Now that the leaves are fallen (for a few days), the long yellow buds (often red-pointed) which sleep along the twigs of the S. discolor are very conspicuous and quite interesting, already even carrying our thoughts for ward to spring. I noticed them first on the 22d. They may be put with the azalea buds already noticed. Even bleak and barren November wears these gems on her breast in sign of the coming year."); October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring.");January 25, 1858 ("What a rich book might be made about buds.")

Now leaves are off we
notice the buds prepared for
another season.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
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/HDT531026

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts Last 30 Days.

The week ahead in Henry’s journal

The week ahead in Henry’s journal
A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy.
"A stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought." ~ H. D. Thoreau, March 28, 1859


I sit on this rock
wrestling with the melody
that possesses me.