8 p.m. — Up the Union Turnpike.
June 22, 2016
I feel my Maker blessing me
How moral the world is made! This bow is not utilitarian. Methinks men are great in proportion as they are moral. After the rain He sets his bow in the heavens! The world is not destitute of beauty. Ask of the skeptic who inquires, Cui bono? why the rainbow was made. While men cultivate flowers below, God cultivates flowers above; he takes charge of the parterres in the heavens.
Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face? How glorious should be the life of man passed under this arch! What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow, yet how little it is remarked!
Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet, with white-barred wings.
The scent of the balm-of-Gilead leaves fills the road after the rain.
There are the amber skies of evening, the colored skies of both morning and evening! Nature adorns these seasons.
Unquestionable truth is sweet, though it were the announcement of our dissolution.
More thunder-showers threaten, and I still can trace those that are gone by.
The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. The far-retreated thunder-clouds low in the southeast horizon and in the north, emitting low flashes which reveal their forms, appear to lift their wings like fireflies; or it is a steady glare like the glow worm. Wherever they go, they make a meadow.
I hear no toads this cool evening.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1852
What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow See November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you. The important fact is its effect on me. He thinks that I have no business to see anything else but just what he defines the rainbow to be, but I care not whether my vision of truth is a waking thought or dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or in the dark. It is the subject of the vision, the truth alone, that concerns me. The philosopher for whom rainbows, etc., can be explained away never saw them. With regard to such objects, I find that it is not they themselves (with which the men of science deal) that concern me; the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i. e. the objects)")
Thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. See March 15. 1859 ("Two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year."); August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow. "); August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty. It was designed to impress man."); August 7, 1852 ("A moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky.") and note to May 11, 1854 ("A rainbow on the brow of summer")
Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet. See June 21, 1855 ("Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm.")
Unquestionable truth is sweet. See August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”); November 1, 1857 ("A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed.")
The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. See June 3, 1852 (“It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening.”) and note to June 8, 1859 ("See lightning-bugs to-night”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies
June 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 22
Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet, with white-barred wings.
The scent of the balm-of-Gilead leaves fills the road after the rain.
There are the amber skies of evening, the colored skies of both morning and evening! Nature adorns these seasons.
Unquestionable truth is sweet, though it were the announcement of our dissolution.
More thunder-showers threaten, and I still can trace those that are gone by.
The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. The far-retreated thunder-clouds low in the southeast horizon and in the north, emitting low flashes which reveal their forms, appear to lift their wings like fireflies; or it is a steady glare like the glow worm. Wherever they go, they make a meadow.
I hear no toads this cool evening.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1852
Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face? See March 3, 1841 ("God's voice is but a clear bell sound."). See also June 22, 1851 ("Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives . . . so that we become like a still lake of purest crys tal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves . All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps .. . . Whom shall I thank for it ? . . . I feel my Maker blessing me ")
Thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. See March 15. 1859 ("Two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year."); August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow. "); August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty. It was designed to impress man."); August 7, 1852 ("A moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky.") and note to May 11, 1854 ("A rainbow on the brow of summer")
Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet. See June 21, 1855 ("Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm.")
Unquestionable truth is sweet. See August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”); November 1, 1857 ("A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed.")
The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. See June 3, 1852 (“It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening.”) and note to June 8, 1859 ("See lightning-bugs to-night”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies
June 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 22
Is not the rainbow
a faint vision of God's face?
A clear bell his voice?
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
tinyurl.com/hdt-520622
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