At this season we
seek to warm ourselves in the
sun as by a fire.
Now leaves are off we
notice the buds prepared for
another season.
October 26, 1853
As woods grow silent
we attend to the cheerful
notes of chickadees.
Seasons are in me.
My moods periodical --
no two days alike.
This is the season
when leaves of the fall whirl
through the air like birds.
This is the season
of clear-yellow leaves left on
the tops of birches.
October 26, 2019
Spring is brown; summer, green; autumn, yellow; winter, white; November, gray. October 26, 1857
These regular phenomena of the seasons get at last to be — they were at first, of course — simply and plainly phenomena or phases of my life. October 26, 1857
The seasons and all their changes are in me. October 26, 1857
Almost I believe the Concord would not rise and overflow its banks again, were I not here. October 26, 1857
After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are. I would have nothing subtracted. I can imagine nothing added. October 26, 1857 See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.
My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. October 26, 1857
The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! October 26, 1857
It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. October 26, 1853
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.October 26, 1853
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. October 26, 1853
The world so seen is all one spring, and full of beauty. October 26, 1853
*****
March 22, 1859 ("The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them.");April 24, 1854 ( I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself.")
April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")May 9, 1853 ("The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow. ");
May 10, 1852 ("We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then.")
May 17, 1852 ("The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.")
May 20, 1856 ("See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped.")June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. . . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”)
June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”)
June 11, 1860 ("Just as we are shoving away from this isle, I hear a sound just like a small dog barking hoarsely, and, looking up, see it was made by a bittern (Ardea minor), a pair of which flap over the meadows and probably nest in some tussock thereabouts.");
June 15, 1857 ("as I passed a swamp, a bittern boomed.")
June 15, 1851 ("The sound of the stake-driver at a distance, — like that made by a man pumping in a neighboring farmyard,. . ., and I can imagine like driving a stake in a meadow. The pumper. . . .before I was further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I thought")
July 22, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows. A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music.")
August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood")
August 14, 1856 ("All the Flint's Pond wood-paths are strewn with these gay-spotted chestnut leaves")
October 6, 1858 ("Only one of the large maples on the Common is yet on fire. ");
October 10, 1856 ("This afternoon it is 80°, . . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night").
October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.")
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 13, 1857 ("I am obliged to sit with my window wide open all the evening as well as all day. It is the earlier Indian summer.")
October 13, 1859 ("The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note")
October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish.")
October 15, 1857 ("The ten days — at least — before this were plainly Indian summer. They were remarkably pleasant and warm. The latter half I sat and slept with an open window,")
October 18, 1856 ("The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green.”);
October 18, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty. “);
October 18, 1856 ("A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop.")
October 20, 1856 ("Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . . we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note,")
October 18, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty. “);
October 18, 1856 ("A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop.")
October 20, 1856 ("Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . . we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note,")
October 21, 1855 ("The scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! ")
October 21, 1855 ("I sit with an open window, it is so warm.")
October 21, 1855 ("I sit with an open window, it is so warm.")
October 21, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are in the midst of their fall to-day. ")
October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,")
October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts.")
October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,")
October 23, 1855 ("Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders."
October 24, 1853 ("Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape")
October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,")
October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts.")
October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,")
October 23, 1855 ("Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders."
October 24, 1853 ("Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape")
October 24, 1857 ("The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast.")
October 24, 1855 ("The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, and, half having fallen, look like the reflection of the trees in water lighting up the Common, reflecting light even to the surrounding houses.")
October 24, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple . . .have lost the greater part of their leaves.")
October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. ")
October 24, 1855 ("The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, and, half having fallen, look like the reflection of the trees in water lighting up the Common, reflecting light even to the surrounding houses.")
October 24, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple . . .have lost the greater part of their leaves.")
October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. ")
October 25, 1853 ("The white maples are completely bare. ");
October 25, 1855 ("The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry.")
October 25, 1858 ("I see some alders about bare. Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. . . .At the pond the black birches are bare");
October 25, 1853 ("The white maples are completely bare. ")
October 25, 1855 ("The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry.")
October 25, 1858 ("I see some alders about bare. Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. . . .At the pond the black birches are bare")
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 25, 1853 ("The white maples are completely bare. ")
October 25, 1855 ("The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry.")
October 25, 1858 ("I see some alders about bare. Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. . . .At the pond the black birches are bare")
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, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks.")
October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”)
October 31, 1854 ("Sat with open window for a week.”)
October 31, 1854 ("[W]e have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts")
November 1, 1858 ("If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed. ")
November 6, 1857 ("seventy years ago . . .there was a large old chestnut by the roadside there, which being cut, two sprouts came up which have become the largest chestnut trees by the wall now.")
November 8, 1855 ("I can sit with my window open and no fire. Much warmer than this time last year.")
November 11, 1859 ("October 24th, riding home from Acton, I saw the withered leaves blown from an oak by the roadside dashing off, gyrating, and surging upward into the air, so exactly like a flock of birds sporting with one another that, for a minute at least, I could not be sure they were not birds.")
December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring.");
December 11, 1858 ("The large scarlet oak in the cemetery has leaves on the lower limbs near the trunk just like the large white oaks now.")
December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow.")
January 10, 1856 ("The great yellow and red forward-looking buds of the azalea")
January 19, 1859 {"Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by.")
January 25, 1858 ("What a rich book might be made about buds,")
January 19, 1859 {"Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by.")
January 25, 1858 ("What a rich book might be made about buds,")
October 26,, 2018
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 © 2009-2016
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