August Moods
The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
Each season is but an infinitesimal point.
It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration.
It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought.
Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting.
Our thoughts and sentiments answer to
the revolutions of the seasons, as two cog-wheels fit into each other.
We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time,
from which we receive a prompting and impulse
and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact.
A year is made up of a certain series and number
of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature.
Now I am ice, now I am sorrel.
Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.
June 6, 1857
In August live on berries.
August 23, 1853
Perfect dog-days now
thick blue musty veil of mist
drawn before the sun.
Singing birds are scarce.
No catbird or thrush heard, but
the pewee sings yet.
August 1, 1852
Midsummer standstill.
That fine z-ing of locusts
is an August sound.
August 2, 1859
The blue horizon,
the blueness of the mountain,
blueberry blueness.
August 5, 1860
Mowers and rakers
bending to their manly work
with graceful motion.
August 5, 1854
Summer becomes an
old story. With the goldfinch
comes the goldenrod.
August 6, 1852
The pensive season.
At early evening the poet
collects his thoughts.
August 11, 1853
Cool fall-like weather.
With a pang I remember
spring and summer past.
This sense of lateness;
Now is the season of fruits,
but where is our fruit?
August 18, 1853
The poet must be
continually watching
the moods of his mind.
A cheering fall rain
brings a different mood or
season of the mind.
All bushes resound.
I wade up to my ears in the
alder locust song.
August 26, 1860
Rain-storm in the night.
The first leaves begin to fall,
blown off by the wind
August 29, 1852
When the flower’s fall
is symbol of my own change
the flower appears.
August 30, 1851
August 1. Perfect dog-days. . . .A thick blue musty veil of mist is drawn before the sun. The sun has not been visible, except for a moment or two once or twice a day, all this time, nor the stars by night. Moisture reigns. August 1, 1856
August 2. That fine z-ing of locusts in the grass which I have heard for three or four days is, methinks, an August sound and is very inspiriting. August 2, 1859
August 3. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe. August 3, 1852
August 4. I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn.. . . I am drunk with the season's wine. August 4, 1851
August 5. It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter. August 5, 1854
August 6.Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming. With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. . . . We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower. August 6, 1852
August 6. Do not the flowers of August and September generally resemble suns and stars? — sunflowers and asters and the single flowers of the goldenrod. August 6, 1853
August 6. The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent. August 6, 1858
August 7. Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood. August 7, 1853.
August 7. The river and brooks look late and cool. The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts. August 7, 1853
August 8. 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. August 8, 1852
August 9. This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind. August 9, 1853
August 10. August, royal and rich. Green corn now, and melons have begun. That month, surely, is distinguished when melons ripen. July could not do it. What a moist, fertile heat now! August 10, 1853
August 11. I smell the fragrant everlasting concealed in the higher grass and weeds there, some distance off. It reminds me of the lateness of the season. August 11, 1858
August 12. Now at last, methinks, the most melting season of this year. August 12, 1853
August 13. First marked dog-day; sultry and with misty clouds. . . .I remember only with a pang the past spring and summer thus far. August 13, 1854
August 14. This misty and musty dog-day weather has lasted now nearly a month. Locust days, — sultry and sweltering. I hear them even till sunset. August 14, 1853
August 15. That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season. August 15, 1852
August 15. It is too late to see the river's brink in its perfection. It must be seen . . .before you feel this sense of lateness in the year, before the meadows are shorn and the grass of hills and pastures is thus withered and russet. August 15, 1854
August 16. These are locust days. August 16, 1852
August 17. Ah ! if I could so live that . . .when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also! that I could match nature always with my moods! that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish! August 17, 1851
August 18. The locust is heard. Fruits are ripening. Ripe apples here and there scent the air. August 18, 1852
August 18. The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late. August 18, 1860
August 18. What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now? — now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit? August 18, 1853
August 18. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, . . . so little brought to pass! August 18, 1856
August 19. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it. August 19, 1851
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August 19. The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind. August 19, 1851
August 19. The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them. August 19, 1852
August 20. It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. August 20, 1858
August 21. I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense. August 21, 1851
August 22. The haze, accompanied by much wind, is so thick this forenoon that the sun is obscured as by a cloud. I see no rays of sunlight.. . . The haze is so thick that we can hardly see more than a mile. August 22, 1854
August 23. There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet. August 23, 1852
August 23. Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of Nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons. Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn. Drink of each season's influence. August 23, 1853
August 23. Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. August 23, 1853
August 24. The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each day which, summed up, would be the history of the year. August 24, 1852
August 25. What a salad to my spirits is this cooler, darker day! . . . a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind. August 25, 1852
August 26. Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours. August 26, 1856
August 27. The nights have been cooler of late, but the heat of the sun by day has been more local and palpable. August 27, 1860
August 28. When, as I go to the post-office this morning, I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground on one side of the tree and blown several rods from it into a neighboring yard, I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope. The prospect is now toward winter. August 28, 1858
August 29. It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. But in this cooler weather I feel as if the fruit of my summer were hardening and maturing a little, acquiring color and flavor like the corn and other fruits in the field. . . . Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples. August 29, 1859
August 30. The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, it is a matter of private rejoicing. August 30, 1856
August 31. The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.August 31, 1852
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August Moods
See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July Moods
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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