Beyond the lone graveyard,
his footsteps shining like silver
between me and the moon.
I see a promise
or sign of spring
in the way the moon
is reflected from the snow.
Henry Thoreau, March 7, 1852
March 6. A still and mild moonlight night and people walking about the streets. March 6, 1860
March 7. At 9 o'clock P.M to the woods by the full moon. It is rather mild to-night. I can walk without gloves. There is no snow on the trees. The ground is thinly covered with a crusted snow, through which the dead grass and weeds appear, telling the nearness of spring.
Though the snow-crust between me and the moon reflects the moon at a distance, westward it is but a dusky white; only where it is heaped up into a drift, or a steep bank occurs, is the moonlight reflected to me as from a phosphorescent place.
I distinguish thus large tracts an eighth of a mile distant in the west, where a steep bank sloping toward the moon occurs, that glow with a white, phosphorescent light, while all the surrounding snow is comparatively dark, as if shaded by the woods. I look to see if these white tracts in the distant fields correspond to openings in the woods, and find that they are places where the crystal mirrors are so disposed as to reflect the moon's light to me.
Going through the high field beyond the lone graveyard, I see the track of a boy's sled before me, and his footsteps shining like silver between me and the moon. I forget that the sun shone on them as if I had reached the region of perpetual twilight, and their sport appears more significant. For what a man does abroad by night is more spiritual, less animal or vegetable.
As I look down the railroad, standing on the west brink of the Deep Cut, I see a promise or sign of spring in the way the moon is reflected from the snow covered west slope – a sort of misty light as if a fine vapor were rising from it.
The stillness is more impressive than any sound – the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow – a monumental stillness, whose void must be supplied by thought.
The moon appears to have waned a little, yet, with this snow on the ground, I can plainly see the words I write. What a contrast there may be between this moon and the next ! March 7, 1852
March 26. It was like the light reflected from the mountain ridges within the shaded portion of the moon, forerunner and herald of the spring. March 26, 1857
See also:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March Moonlight
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 © 2009-2026
