A Book of the Seasons: August 23.

August 23.

A man in a boat

disappearing round a bend

far off in the sun.

August 23, 1851

I look out my eyes

I come to my window and 

I  breathe the fresh air.

August 23, 1852

A man in a boat

disappearing round a bend,

as in a picture.

August 23, 1851

Real wind blows over

the surface of a planet.

I breathe the fresh air.

August 23, 1852

I am peculiarly sensible this is a real wind

blowing from over the surface of a planet.

I look out at my eyes

I come to my window,

and I feel and breathe

the fresh air.

In August live on berries
be blown on by all the winds

grow ripe in Autumn.

August 23, 1852

Now begins the year's

dark green early afternoon

when shadows increase.

August 23, 1853

Sometimes something which

I have told another is

worth telling myself.

August 23, 1858

August 23, 2013

August 23, 2019

I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, i.e. writing in my Journal. August 23, 1858

Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. August 23, 1853

There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet. 

I look out at my eyes

I come to my window

and I feel and breathe 

the fresh air. 

It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience.  August 23, 1852

A man in a boat

disappearing round a bend

as in a picture.

August 23, 1851

There was a man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle as if he were a vision — far off, as in picture. August 23, 1851

Observing the blackness of the foliage, especially between me and the light, I am reminded that it begins in the spring,

                           the dewy dawn of the year, 

with a silvery hoary downiness, changing to a yellowish or light green, —  

  the saffron-robed morn, — 

then to a pure, spotless, glossy green with light under sides reflecting the light,—

               the forenoon, — 

and now the dark green,

                           or early afternoon,

when shadows begin to increase, and next it will turn yellow or red, — the sunset sky, — and finally sere brown and black, when 

                           the night of the year sets in.

I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day — say an August day — and the year. August 23, 1853

*****

Walden (" Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.").

The Maine Woods ("daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”)

Walden, "Spring" ("The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.");

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 © 2009-2019