A year is made up of a certain series and
number of sensations and thoughts
which have their language in nature . . .
Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.
Henry Thoreau, June 6, 1857
I hear a cricket
and am penetrated with
the sense of autumn. August 4, 1851
A sound reminds me
past autumns, lapse of time – so
little brought to pass.
August 18, 1856
May 24. 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 . . . it is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence. May 24, 1851
July 31. I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years. July 31, 1856
August 17. I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. It saves my life from being trivial. My life flows with a deeper current, no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and shrunken by the summer heats. This coolness comes to condense the dews and clear the atmosphere. August 17, 1851
August 18. It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness. August 18, 1851
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. I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass! August 18, 1856
August 20. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. August 20, 1858
October 26. I awoke this morning to infinite regret. October 26, 1851
October 31. I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things. October 31, 1860
See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer midlife blues
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Pleasing Melancholy
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
https://tinyurl.com/hdtmelancholy
