For some reason I now remember the autumn

May 10. 

This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts. 

The rain is making the grass grow apace. It appears to stand upright, — its blades, — and you can almost see it grow.

For some reason I now remember the autumn, — the succory and the goldenrod. We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? 

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. 

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! The leaves are but calyx and escort to the flower. 

Some beds of clover wave. 

Some look out only for the main chance, and do not regard appearances nor manners; others — others regard these mainly. It is an immense difference. I feel it frequently. It is a theme I must dwell upon. 

There is an aurora borealis to-night, and I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1852


The streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, See April 30, 1860 ("Cattle begin to go up-country."); May 4, 1853 ("Cattle are going up country."); May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country. "); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now.");

We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. See May 7, 1852 ("How full of reminiscence is any fragrance!"). Compare July 1, 1856 ("The air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.") July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?"); October 26, 1853 ("It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us."); 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? See May 1, 1860 ("The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite."); May 29, 1854 (“The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”)

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. See May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”) and note to May 10, 1856 ("Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather. "); May 10, 1857 ("Cultivated cherry out. "); May 10, 1858 ("The northern wild red cherry by Everett's, apparently to-morrow.")

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! See April 28, 1852 ("The spring flowers wait not to perfect their leaves before they expand their blossoms. The blossom in so many cases precedes the leaf; so with poetry? They flash out.") 

I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers. See May 25, 1851 (“Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.”); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog." Also April 3, 1858 (“Sometimes the meadow will be almost still; then they will begin in earnest, and plainly excite one an other into a general snoring or eructation over a quarter of a mile of meadow.”); April 11, 1854 (“Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? ”); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th.."); May 8, 1857 ("It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris)."); May 6, 1858 ("About 9 P. M. I went to the edge of the river to hear the frogs. It was a warm and moist, rather foggy evening, and the air full of the ring of the toad, the peep of the hylodes, and the low growling croak or stertoration of the Rana palustris. . . . There was a universal snoring of the R. palustris all up and down the river on each side, . . . It is a hard, dry, unmusical, fine watchman’s-rattle-like stertoration, swelling to a speedy conclusion.”)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 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 ©  2009-2021