Now if there are any who think that I am vainglorious, that I set myself up above others and crow over their low estate, let me tell them that
- I could tell a pitiful story respecting myself as well as them, if my spirits held out to do it;
- I could encourage them with a sufficient list of failures, and could flow as humbly as the very gutters themselves;
- I could enumerate a list of as rank offenses as ever reached the nostrils of heaven;
I put the best face on the matter I will tell them this secret, if they will not tell it to anybody else.
 |
| February 10, 2019 |
When the farmer burns a hole in his yoke, he carries the hot iron quickly from the fire to the wood, for every moment it is less effectual to penetrate (pierce) it. It must be used in stantly, or it is useless. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. There is perchance more moisture in the air. Perhaps that phenomenon does not belong to this part of the winter.
I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees, dead and sunk half an inch below the crust. They had evidently come forth from their hive (perhaps in a large hemlock on the bank close by), and had fallen on the snow chilled to death. Their bodies extended from the tree to about three rods from it toward the pond.
Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1852
Write while the heat is in you. See September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); September 4-7, 1851 (“I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write.”); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him.”). Compare July 23, 1851 (“Be impressed without making a minute of it. Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally.”); May 5, 1852 (“I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness”); April 20, 1854 (“I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water.”); March 28, 1857 (“Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember. ”); February 3, 1859 (“Most that is first written on any subject is a mere groping after it, mere rubble-stone and foundation. It is only when many observations of different periods have been brought together that [the writer] begins to grasp his subject and can make one pertinent and just observation.”)
We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. See December 9, 1859 (“I observe at mid-afternoon that peculiarly softened western sky, . . .giving it a slight greenish tinge.”); December 11, 1854 (" It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem”); December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset."); December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth."); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. . . .Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.”); January 24, 1852 (" Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky
We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. There is perchance more moisture in the air. Perhaps that phenomenon does not belong to this part of the winter.
I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees, dead and sunk half an inch below the crust. They had evidently come forth from their hive (perhaps in a large hemlock on the bank close by), and had fallen on the snow chilled to death. Their bodies extended from the tree to about three rods from it toward the pond.
Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1852
Write while the heat is in you. See September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); September 4-7, 1851 (“I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write.”); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him.”). Compare July 23, 1851 (“Be impressed without making a minute of it. Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally.”); May 5, 1852 (“I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness”); April 20, 1854 (“I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water.”); March 28, 1857 (“Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember. ”); February 3, 1859 (“Most that is first written on any subject is a mere groping after it, mere rubble-stone and foundation. It is only when many observations of different periods have been brought together that [the writer] begins to grasp his subject and can make one pertinent and just observation.”)
We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. See December 9, 1859 (“I observe at mid-afternoon that peculiarly softened western sky, . . .giving it a slight greenish tinge.”); December 11, 1854 (" It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem”); December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset."); December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth."); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. . . .Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.”); January 24, 1852 (" Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky
Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey. See February 13, 1852 (“Talking with Rice this afternoon about the bees which I discovered the other day, he told me something about his bee-hunting.”); March 4, 1852 (" I cut my initials on the bee tree”); September 30, 1852 ("Custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree "); February 25, 1856 (“As I stand there, see that they have just felled my bee tree, the hemlock. The chopper even now stands at its foot.”)
February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 10
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
No comments:
Post a Comment