July 26.
By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky.
In your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are of necessity isolated.
The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society.
My desire for society is infinitely increased; my fitness for any actual society is diminished.
Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day.
Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds.
Once, as he was crossing the College Yard, he saw the wings of one coming down, which reached the ground just at his feet. What a tragedy! The wings came down as the only evidence that such a creature had soared, — wings large and splendid, which were designed to bear a precious burthen through the upper air.
So most poems, even epics, are like the wings come down to earth, while the poet whose adventurous flight they evidence has been snapped up [by] the ravenous vulture of this world.
If this moth ventures abroad by day, some bird will pick out the precious cargo and let the sails and rigging drift, as when the sailor meets with a floating spar and sail and reports a wreck seen in a certain latitude and longitude.
For what were such tender and defenseless organizations made?
The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.
Perchance the entomologist never saw an entire specimen, but, as he walked one day, the wings of a larger species than he had ever seen came fluttering down.
The wreck of an argosy in the air.
He tells me the glow-worms are first seen, he thinks, in the last part of August. Also that there is a large and brilliant glow-worm found here, more than an inch long, as he measured it to me on his finger, but rare.
Perhaps the sunset glows are sudden in proportion as the edges of the clouds are abrupt, when the sun finally reaches such a point that his rays can be reflected from them.
At 10 p. m. I see high columns of fog, formed in the lowlands and lit by the moon, preparing to charge this higher ground. It is as if the sky reached the solid ground there, for they shut out the woods.
My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude. See March 17, 1852 (“There is a moment in the dawn,. . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”); June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes"); August 31, 1852 ("The wind is gone down; the water is smooth; a serene evening is approaching; the clouds are dispersing. . . .The reflections are the more perfect for the blackness of the water. This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive. Evening is fairer than morning. Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water") ; January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night"); August 11, 1853 (" What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection, after the insufferable heats and the bustle of the day are over and before the twilight? The serene hour, the season of reflection! The pensive season.The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence. It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than before. The poet arouses himself and collects his thoughts.");.Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and A Book of the Seasons, The hour before sunset
The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society. See January 17, 1852 ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable."): June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.")
Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna. See July 8, 1852 ("I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds. Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches the thing like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick. The sight affected me as tropical, . . . It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.") See also June 27, 1858 ("See an Attacus luna in the shady path");June 27, 1859 ("At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna."); June 29, 1859 ("I found the wing of an Attacus luna, — and July 1st another wing near Second Division, which makes three between June 27th and July 1st."); July 1, 1853 ; ("Saw one of those great pea-green emperor moths, like a bird, fluttering over the top of the woods this forenoon, 10 a. m., near Beck Stow's") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)
By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky.
In your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are of necessity isolated.
The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society.
My desire for society is infinitely increased; my fitness for any actual society is diminished.
Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day.
Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds.
Once, as he was crossing the College Yard, he saw the wings of one coming down, which reached the ground just at his feet. What a tragedy! The wings came down as the only evidence that such a creature had soared, — wings large and splendid, which were designed to bear a precious burthen through the upper air.
So most poems, even epics, are like the wings come down to earth, while the poet whose adventurous flight they evidence has been snapped up [by] the ravenous vulture of this world.
If this moth ventures abroad by day, some bird will pick out the precious cargo and let the sails and rigging drift, as when the sailor meets with a floating spar and sail and reports a wreck seen in a certain latitude and longitude.
For what were such tender and defenseless organizations made?
The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.
Perchance the entomologist never saw an entire specimen, but, as he walked one day, the wings of a larger species than he had ever seen came fluttering down.
The wreck of an argosy in the air.
He tells me the glow-worms are first seen, he thinks, in the last part of August. Also that there is a large and brilliant glow-worm found here, more than an inch long, as he measured it to me on his finger, but rare.
Perhaps the sunset glows are sudden in proportion as the edges of the clouds are abrupt, when the sun finally reaches such a point that his rays can be reflected from them.
At 10 p. m. I see high columns of fog, formed in the lowlands and lit by the moon, preparing to charge this higher ground. It is as if the sky reached the solid ground there, for they shut out the woods.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1852
My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude. See March 17, 1852 (“There is a moment in the dawn,. . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”); June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes"); August 31, 1852 ("The wind is gone down; the water is smooth; a serene evening is approaching; the clouds are dispersing. . . .The reflections are the more perfect for the blackness of the water. This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive. Evening is fairer than morning. Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water") ; January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night"); August 11, 1853 (" What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection, after the insufferable heats and the bustle of the day are over and before the twilight? The serene hour, the season of reflection! The pensive season.The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence. It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than before. The poet arouses himself and collects his thoughts.");.Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and A Book of the Seasons, The hour before sunset
The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society. See January 17, 1852 ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable."): June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.")
Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna. See July 8, 1852 ("I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds. Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches the thing like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick. The sight affected me as tropical, . . . It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.") See also June 27, 1858 ("See an Attacus luna in the shady path");June 27, 1859 ("At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna."); June 29, 1859 ("I found the wing of an Attacus luna, — and July 1st another wing near Second Division, which makes three between June 27th and July 1st."); July 1, 1853 ; ("Saw one of those great pea-green emperor moths, like a bird, fluttering over the top of the woods this forenoon, 10 a. m., near Beck Stow's") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)
July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26
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
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