I saw the seal of evening on the river.

August 31.

August 31, 2017

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff, when, looking up from my botanizing, I saw the seal of evening on the river. There was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour which my senses were prepared to appreciate. 

• The sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and pads even more than before. His rays then fell at right angles on their stems.

• I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged and covered with weedy moss. Sometimes their tops are submerged.

• The cardinal-flowers standing by me.

The trivialness of the day is past. 

• The greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.)

• The coolness of evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste (chaste eve). 

Even as I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought. After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life. The evening air is such a bath for both mind and body.

When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun and the world has been all trivial, ― 

    then at eve the sun goes down westward, 

    and the wind goes down with it, 

    and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, 

    and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day.

I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1851

The pensive eve. See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive . . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water."); see also August 2, 1854 ("I feel the necessity of deepening the stream of my life. . .I am inclined now for a pensive evening walk."); August 11, 1853 ("The serene hour, the season of reflection! The pensive season."); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hour before sunset

August 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 31

The greater stillness

is favorable to thought –

pensive evening.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, pensive evening

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

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