Infinite regret

October 26

I awoke this morning to infinite regret . . .

And then I was walking in a meadow . . .  and there I met Mr. Alcott, and we fell to quoting and referring to grand and pleasing couplets and single lines which we had read in times past; and I quoted one which in my waking hours I have no knowledge of, but in my dream it was familiar enough. I only know that those which I quoted expressed regret, and were like the following, though they were not these:

 "The short parenthesis of life was sweet,"

"The remembrance of youth is a sigh," etc.

The instant that I awoke, methought I was a musical instrument from which I heard a strain die out, a bugle, or a clarionet, or a flute.  My body was the organ and channel of melody, as a flute is of the music that is breathed through it. My flesh sounded and vibrated still to the strain, and my nerves were the chords of the lyre . . .

I heard the last strain or flourish, as I woke, played on my body as the instrument. Such I knew I had been and might be again, and my regret arose from the consciousness how little like a musical instrument my body was now . . . 

I awoke, therefore, to an infinite regret, — to find myself, not the thoroughfare of glorious and world-stirring inspirations, but a scuttle full of dirt . . .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1851

I awoke this morning. See May 24, 1851 ("Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret . . . the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible. . . My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and, in the act of reentering its native body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around . . .It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence."); June 12, 1851 ("Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear."); June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind.”);; July 16, 1851 ("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us"); March 17, 1852 ("I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual"); September 12, 1853 ("It occurred to me when I awoke this morning . . . that man was to be treated as a musical instrument, and if any viol was to be made of sound timber and kept well tuned always, it was he, so that when the bow of events is drawn across him he may vibrate and resound in perfect harmony. A sensitive soul will be continually trying its strings to see if they are in tune."); December 19, 1856 ("For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously "); October 29, 1857 ("Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground between dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind . . . we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. "); January 15, 1857 ("What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps?"); November 30, 1858 ("I can only think of precious jewels, of music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life. "); August 27, 1859 ("All our life, i.e. the living part of it, is a persistent dreaming awake.");  November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream."); April 1, 1860 ("I occasionally awake in the night simply to let fall ripe a statement which I had never consciously considered before, and as surprising and novel and agreeable to me as anything can be. As if we only thought by sympathy with the universal mind, which thought while we were asleep.") and Walden (“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”)

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

I knew I had been 

and might be again and 

my regret arose.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Infinite regret

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 © 2009-2024