March 18.
Tree sparrows have warbled faintly for a week.
When I pass by a twig of willow, though of the slenderest kind, rising above the sedge in some dry hollow early in December, or in midwinter above the snow, my spirits rise as if it were an oasis in the desert.
The very name “sallow” (salix, from the Celtic sallis, near water) suggests that there is some natural sap or blood flowing there.
It is a divining wand that has not failed, but stands with its root in the fountain.
The fertile willow catkins are those green caterpillar like ones, commonly an inch or more in length, which develop themselves rapidly after the sterile yellow ones,which we had so admired are fallen or effete.
Arranged around the bare twigs, they often form green wands eight to eighteen inches long.
A single catkin consists of from twenty-five to a hundred little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, each of which is closely packed with cotton, in which are numerous seeds so small that they are scarcely discernible by ordinary eyes.
I do not know what they mean who call this the emblem of despairing love! “The willow, worn by forlorn paramour!” It is rather the emblem of love and sympathy with all nature. It may droop, — it is so lithe, supple, and pliant — but it never weeps.
The willow of Babylon blooms not the less hopefully with us, though its other half is not in the New World at all, and never has been. It droops, not to represent David's tears, but rather to snatch the crown from Alexander's head. (Nor were poplars ever the weeping sisters of Phaëton, for nothing rejoices them more than the sight of the Sun's chariot, and little reck they who drives it.)
You can't read any genuine history — as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede - without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject but on the man, on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it.
A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius - a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world.
Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.
You are simply a witness on the stand to tell what you know about your neighbors and neighborhood.
Your account of foreign parts which you have never seen should by good rights be less interesting.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1861
Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits. See February 24, 1855 ("The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring,. . . as if all the landscape and all nature shone. T. . . I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. "); March 13, 1859 ("The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed.."); March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins!"); April 12, 1852 ("See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day. . . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); May 14, 1852 (“Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow!”)
Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits.
No wonder its wood was anciently in demand for bucklers, for, take the whole tree, it is not only soft and pliant but tough and resilient (as Pliny says ?), not splitting at the first blow, but closing its wounds at once and refusing to transmit its hurts.
I know of one foreign species which introduced itself into Concord as [a] withe used to tie up a bundle of trees. A gardener stuck it in the ground, and it lived, and has its descendants.
Herodotus says that the Scythians divined by the help of willow rods. I do not know any better twigs for this purpose.
How various are the habits of men ! Mother says that her father - in - law, Captain Minott, not only used to roast and eat a long row of little wild apples, reaching in a semicircle from jamb to jamb under the andirons on the reddened hearth (I used to buy many a pound of Spanish brown at the stores for mother to redden the jambs and hearth with), but he had a quart of new milk regularly placed at the head of his bed, which he drank at many draughts in the course of the night.
It was so the night he died, and my grandmother discovered that he was dying, by his not turning over to reach his milk.
I asked what he died of, and mother answered apoplexy! at which I did not wonder.
Still this habit may not have caused it. I have a cousin, also, who regularly eats his bowl of bread and milk just before going to bed, however late. He is a very stirring man.
No wonder its wood was anciently in demand for bucklers, for, take the whole tree, it is not only soft and pliant but tough and resilient (as Pliny says ?), not splitting at the first blow, but closing its wounds at once and refusing to transmit its hurts.
I know of one foreign species which introduced itself into Concord as [a] withe used to tie up a bundle of trees. A gardener stuck it in the ground, and it lived, and has its descendants.
Herodotus says that the Scythians divined by the help of willow rods. I do not know any better twigs for this purpose.
How various are the habits of men ! Mother says that her father - in - law, Captain Minott, not only used to roast and eat a long row of little wild apples, reaching in a semicircle from jamb to jamb under the andirons on the reddened hearth (I used to buy many a pound of Spanish brown at the stores for mother to redden the jambs and hearth with), but he had a quart of new milk regularly placed at the head of his bed, which he drank at many draughts in the course of the night.
It was so the night he died, and my grandmother discovered that he was dying, by his not turning over to reach his milk.
I asked what he died of, and mother answered apoplexy! at which I did not wonder.
Still this habit may not have caused it. I have a cousin, also, who regularly eats his bowl of bread and milk just before going to bed, however late. He is a very stirring man.
You can't read any genuine history — as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede - without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject but on the man, on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it.
A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius - a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world.
Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.
You are simply a witness on the stand to tell what you know about your neighbors and neighborhood.
Your account of foreign parts which you have never seen should by good rights be less interesting.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1861
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