April
Something reminds me
of the song of the robin –
rainy days, past springs.
Man's moods and thoughts revolve
just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s.
April 24, 1859
Let the season rule us.
Find your eternity in each moment.
April 24, 1859
Our moods vary from week to week,
with the winds and the temperature
and the revolution of the seasons.
Every new flower that opens, no doubt,
expresses a new mood of the human mind.
Each season is but an infinitesimal point.
It no sooner comes than it is gone.
It has no duration
June 6, 1857
The spring now seems far behind,
yet I do not remember the interval.
July 2, 1854
July 2, 1854
We have become accustomed to the summer.
It has acquired a certain eternity.
July 5, 1852
This rapid revolution of nature,
even of nature in me,
why should it hurry me?
Yesterday it was spring,
and to-morrow it will be autumn.
Where is the summer then?
Late rose now in prime.
The memory of roses
along the river.
It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer
and another long declivity from midsummer to winter.
The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve,
and therefore Nature rests no longer
at her culminating point
than at any other.
Nature never lost a day, nor a moment.
As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons,
so does time, revolve, with a rapidity inconceivable.
In the moment, in the eon, time ever advances with this rapidity.
 |
| September The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay. How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone. September 17, 1857 Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The bud swells imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed? The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step. September 17, 1839  October The seasons and all their changes are in me. October 26, 1857  November November twilight, clear white light seen through the woods, the leaves being gone. November 2, 1853 November's bare bleak inaccessible beauty seen through a clear air.  December Suddenly we have passed from Indian summer to winter. December 5, 1859 The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It was summer, and now again it is winter. Walking on the ice by the side of the river I recommence life. After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike. Between winter and summer there is, to my mind, an immeasurable interval. January 24, 1858 Mercury down to 13° below zero. I say, "Let us sing winter." What else can we sing, and our voices be in harmony with the season? January 30, 1854  February Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulfstream of winter, nearer the shores of spring. February 2, 1854 Though the days are much longer now the cold sets in stronger than ever. The rivers and meadows are frozen. That earth is effectually buried. It is midwinter. February 9, 1851 Sunlight thawing snow strangely excites a springlike melting in my thoughts. February 12, 1856 The northerly wind roaring in the woods to-day reminds me of March. February 20, 1855 It is a moderately cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. We have almost completely forgotten summer. February 27, 1852  March No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring. Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. March 18, 1858 Distant mountaintop as blue to the memory as now to the eyes. March 31, 1853 |
*****
All these times and places
and occasions
are now and here.
God Himself culminates
in the present moment.
See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, There was an artist in the City of Kouroo
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve
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 © 2009-2022
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