One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described February 14, 1851
Coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. November 21, 1850
1
We are made to love
the pond and meadow as wind
to ripple water.
With its island and
meadow between the island
and the shore and its
strip of perfectly
still and smooth water in the
lee of the island,
I see Fair Haven
and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps,
sailing over it.
I do not see how
it could be improved or yet
what these things can be.
I begin to see
such an object when I cease
to understand it.
These forms and colors
so adapted to my eye,
meadow and island.
What are these things?
The hawks and ducks so aloof --
Nature so reserved.
2
I see Fair Haven Pond
with its island and meadow
between the island
and the shore and a
strip of perfectly still and
smooth water in the
lee of the island
and two hawks fish hawks perhaps
sailing over it.
I do not see how
it could be improved or yet
what these things can be.
I begin to see
such an object when I
cease to understand it.
and I see that I
did not appreciate or
realize it before --
how adapted these
forms and colors to my eye!
meadow and island!
Nature so reserved!
the hawks and ducks so aloof!
What are these things?
I get no further than this
.
We are made to love
pond and meadow as the wind
to ripple water.
See also
- July 16, 1851(" To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! . . .There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)
- January 26, 1852 ("Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.")
- April 18, 1852 (""Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? ")
- August 3, 1852 (" By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.")
- August 23, 1852 ("What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics?")
- August 23, 1852 ("I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience.")
- June 5, 1853 ("The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla")
- Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.")
- September 4, 1854 ("Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her. ")
- September 9, 1854 ("Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures. ")
- January 12, 1855 (" It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls. Ah, bless the Lord, O my soul! bless him for wildness, for crows that will not alight within gunshot! and bless him for hens, too, that croak and cackle in the yard! ")
- December 11, 1855 ("I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature")
- December 5, 1856 ("I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too")
- November 22, 1860 ("Still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him. Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain- top through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon. ")
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 21.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, We are made to love
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 © 2009-2023
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