I am that rock by the pond-side.

February 20. 

February 20. 5:59 PM

This morning the ground is once more covered about one inch deep. 

Minott says that the house he now lives in was framed and set up by Captain Isaac Hoar just beyond the old house by Moore's, this side the one he was born in, his mother's (?) house (whose well is that buried by Alcott on the sidewalk), and there the frame stood several years, Hoar having gone off, he thinks, to Westminster. 

M. helped a man take down its chimney when he was a boy; it was very old, laid in clay. He was quite a lad and used to climb up on the frame and, with a teaspoon, take the eggs of the house wren out of the mortise-holes. 

At last his grandfather, Dr. Abel Prescott, "an eminent physician," bought it and moved it to where it now stands, and died in it in 1805, aged eighty-eight (born 1717). Said he died exactly where I sat, and the bed stood so and so, north and south from the clock. 

This Dr. Prescott had once probably lived with his nephew Willoughby Prescott, where Loring's is. After, when married, lived in the old rough-cast house near the poorhouse where Minott's mother was born. 

It was Dr. Abel P.'s son Abel (Minott's uncle) who rode into Concord before the British. Minott's father was rich, and died early in the army, Aunt says.

Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on. 

He says that Frank Buttrick (who for a great many years worked at carpentering for John Richardson, and was working for him when he died) told him that Richardson called him when he was at the point of death and told him that he need not stop working on account of his death, but he might come in to the prayer if he wished to. R. is spoken of as a strong and resolute man.

I wish that there was in every town, in some place accessible to the traveller, instead of or beside the common directories, etc., a list of the worthies of the town, i. e. of those who are worth seeing. 

Miss Minott has several old pieces of furniture that belonged to her grandfather Prescott, one a desk made for him and marked 1760. She said the looking-glass was held oldest furniture, she thought. It has the name John scratched on the middle by a madcap named John Bulkley from college, who had got so far with a diamond before he was stopped. 

Beverley, after describing the various kinds of fowl that frequented the shores of Virginia, "not to mention beavers, otters, musk rats, minxes," etc., etc., says, "Although the inner lands want these benefits (which, however, no pond or plash is without)," etc. I admire the offhand way of describing the superfluous fertility of the land and water. 


What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. It is a natural fact. If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. I am that rock by the pond-side. 

What is hope, what is expectation, but a seed-time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible expedition of the mind, at length to be victorious ?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1857

This morning the ground is once more covered about one inch deep. See February 20, 1858 ("The most wintry day of the winter; yet not more than three inches on a level is fallen.")

I am that rock by the pond-side.  See July 16 1851 ("I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction”); August 8, 1852 ("I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections”); August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”); December 11, 1855 (" My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery.”); The Maine Woods ("daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”); August 30 1856  (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter. . .”); May 12, 1857 (“He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. . . .One with the rocks and with us.”)

Also Walden (Solitude) (“. . .all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it.  . . . However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.”)

A transient perception of immortal beauty. Angels from the north.

December 11

P. M. —To Holden Swamp, Conantum. 

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

For the first time I wear gloves, but I have not walked early this season. 

I see no birds, but hear, methinks, one or two tree sparrows. No snow; scarcely any ice to be detected. It is only an aggravated November. 

I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring the leafets of the swamp pyrus which had put forth again, now frost bitten, the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda. 

Slowly I worm my way amid the snarl, the thicket of black alders and blueberry, etc.; see the forms, apparently, of rabbits at the foot of maples, and catbirds’ nests now exposed in the leafless thicket. 

Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ...

The traveller is frozen on his way. But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow! As if a flower were created to be now in bloom, a peach to be now first fully ripe on its stem. 

I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature.

There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances. When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he does not suggest poverty, but dazzles us with his beauty. 

The winter, with its snow and ice, is not an evil to be corrected. It is as it was designed and made to be, for the artist has had leisure to add beauty. My acquaintances, angels from the north. ....

.... My acquaintances, angels from the north. I had a vision thus of these birds as I stood in the swamps. I saw this familiar fact at a different angle.

It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. 

Only what we have touched and worn is trivial, —our scurf, repetition, tradition, conformity. 

To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired. 

Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle. 

My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. I can generally recall-- have fresh in my mind --several scratches last received. These I continually recall to mind, reimpress, and harp upon. 

The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls. 

In winter, too, resides immortal youth and perennial summer.

We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. 

Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice. From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow. 

Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear. 

Then I try to discover what it was in the vision that charmed and translated me. For I am surprised and enchanted often by some quality which I cannot detect. 

It is a wonderful fact that I should be affected, and thus deeply and powerfully, more than by aught else in all my experience, — that this fruit should be borne in me and bear flowers and fruits of immortal beauty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 11, 1855

It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. See 1850 (“What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape ?”); March 29, 1853 ("Not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. ")

My body is all sentient. See July 16 1851 ("I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction . . To have such sweet impressions made on me”); the Maine Woods (" Daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world!"); June 21, 1852 ("With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions."); ;August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”); August 30 1856 (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter”); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

Zphx

But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow! See November 21, 1852  ("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. . . . They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. ); March 5, 1853 ("They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . . They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll

When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he dazzles us with his beauty. See December 24, 1851 (“Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; . . .when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps, with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be.”)

Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow color. See January 21, 1838 ("The scene changed at every step, or as the head was inclined to the right or the left. There were the opal and sapphire and emerald and jasper and beryl and topaz and ruby"); December 11, 1854 ("It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.”); February 13, 1859 ("The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. It is as if the dust of diamonds and other precious stones were spread all around. The blue and red predominate."); compare April 9, 1855 ("With April showers, me thinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter?")

We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. See June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test"); January 21, 1838 ("If I seek her elsewhere because I do not find her at home, my search will prove a fruitless one.")

December 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 11

In this bare landscape

I am overcome by the 

beauty of the world.

Great winter itself 

reflecting rainbow colors

like a precious gem.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A transient perception of immortal beauty. 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551211

My life is an ecstasy.

July 16.

The morning and the evening are sweet to me. Nature develops as I develop, and grows up with me. I wonder if a mortal has ever known what I know.

My life is ecstasy. I am all alive, and inhabit my body with inexpressible satisfaction. Both its weariness and its refreshment are sweet to me. To have such sweet impressions made on me, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! 

I  am astonished. I am daily intoxicated. There comes to me  such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion --  and yet I have had nought to do with it. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence that I have not procured myself. I am dealt with by superior powers.

The maker of me is improving me. When I detect this interference I am profoundly moved. With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 16, 1851

I am all alive, and inhabit my body with inexpressible satisfaction. See November 25, 1850 ("The satisfaction of existence. . . .Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us."); December 11, 1855 ("To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired. My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery.  The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.”) March 30, 1853 ("Ah, those youthful days! are they never to return? when the walker . . . sees, hears, scents, tastes, and feels only himself, - the phenomena that show themselves in him, - his expanding body, his intellect and heart.”) August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”)

This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence that I have not procured myself. See May 23, 1854("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.")

My life was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me  This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to other , “There comes into my mind such an indescribable , infinite , all - absorbing , divine , heavenly pleasure , a sense of elevation and expansion, and [ I ] have had nought to do with it . I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself  I speak as a witness on the stand , and tell what I have perceived." The morning and the evening were sweet to me, and I led a life aloof from society of men. I wondered if a mortal had ever known what I knew. I looked in books for some recognition of a kindred experience, but, strange to say, I found none 


What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure to be becoming pure? It is almost desirable to be impure that we may be the subject of this improvement. That I am innocent to my self! That I love and reverence my life! That I am better fitted for a lofty society to-day than I was yesterday! To make my life a sacrament! What is nature without this lofty tumbling? May I treat myself with more and more respect and tenderness. May I not for get that I am impure and vicious. May I not cease to love purity. May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day. May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself fofa society ever higher than I actually enjoy. May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly dis covered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What temple, what fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own being? The possibility of my own improvement, that is to be cherished. As I regard myself, so I am. O my dear friends, I have not forgotten you. I will know you to-morrow. I associate you with my ideal self. I had ceased to have faith in myself. I thought I was grown up and become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me. In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in the beginning spring and vernal season of life. It is the love of virtue makes us young ever. That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after the perfect. I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world. The lecturer suggested to me that I might become better than I am. Was it not a good lecture, then? May I dream not that I shunned vice ; may I dream that I loved and practiced virtue.

We are made to love

February 14

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. 

How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding!  

How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

One afternoon in the fall, November, 2015

One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described, which made me say to myself that the landscape could not be improved. 

I did not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not know what these things can be; I begin to see such objects only when I leave off understanding them, and afterwards remember that I did not appreciate them before. But I get no further than this. 

How adapted these forms and colors to our eyes, a meadow and its islands! What are these things?

Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature is so reserved! We are made to love the river and the meadow, as the wind to ripple the water.

We learn by the January thaw that the winter is intermittent and are reminded of other seasons. The back of the winter is broken.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1851

How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! See June 23, 1851 ("My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot, and which my senses do not report."); September 9, 1858 (“How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him."); October 4, 1859 ("It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange . . . you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be"); January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. . . He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be.”)

I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow. See May, 1850 ("In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven."); November 21, 1850 ("I see Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I do not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can be."); April 14, 1852 ("The different parts of Fair Haven Pond -- the pond,. . . the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all, looking for his prey . . . So perfectly calm and beautiful, and yet no man looking at it this morning but myself.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fair Haven Pond

November 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 14

We are made to love

the river and the meadow – 

wind ripples water.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, We are made to love.

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-510214

Visions Illuminations Inspirations ecstasies

November 21

November 21, 2016

For a month past the grass under the pines has been covered with a new carpet of pine leaves. It is remarkable that the old leaves turn and fall in so short a time. 

Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes I have seen, as well on account of the closeness of their branches as of their thorns, have been wild apples. Its branches as stiff as those of the black spruce on the tops of mountains.

I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and oxen on Conantum this afternoon, running about and frisking in unwieldy sport like huge rats. Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. They even played like kittens, in their way; shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down the hill.

Seeing the sun falling on a distant white pinewood with mingled gray and green, in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. 

It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future. 

Coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. 

I see Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I do not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can be. I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or appreciate it before, but I get no further than this. 

How adapted these forms and colors to my eye! A meadow and an island! What are these things? Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved! I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water.

As I looked on the Walden woods eastward across the pond, I saw suddenly a white cloud rising above their tops, now here, now there, marking the progress of the cars which were rolling toward Boston far below, behind many hills and woods.

October must be the month of ripe and tinted leaves.

Throughout November they are almost entirely withered and sombre, the few that remain. In this month the sun is valued. When it shines warmer or brighter we are sure to observe it. There are not so many colors to attract the eye. We begin to remember the summer.

We walk fast to keep warm. For a month past I have sat by a fire.

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.

I get nothing to eat in my walks now but wild apples, sometimes some cranberries, and some walnuts. The squirrels have got the hazelnuts and chestnuts.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1850

A new carpet of pine leaves . . . the old leaves turn and fall in so short a time. See November 9, 1850 ("Just a month ago, I observed that the white pines were parti-colored, green and yellow . . .There is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

Coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. See January, 1851("It is something to know when you are addressed by Divinity and not by a common traveller."); July 7, 1851 ("Knowledge does not come to us by details but by lieferungs from the gods."); July 16, 1851(" To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes!  . . . There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”); August 3, 1852 (" By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree."); December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance . . . The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.")

Fair Haven Pond . . . What are these things?  See September 7, 1851 ("We are receiving our portion of the infinite. We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery.");; April 8, 1852 ( ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? . . . I would fain explore the mysterious relation between myself and these things."); August 23, 1852 ("What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold?"); March 29, 1853 ("Not till we are completely lost or turned round . . . .do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature . . . begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations.") See also February 14, 1851 ("What are these things?") ("") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fair Haven Pond

I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it. See February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see.")

Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks. See April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all."); May 1850 ("I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.")

Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved! See November 22, 1860 (Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man . . . still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.")

I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world,- Kosmos, or beauty. We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); April 18, 1852 ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? ");June 25, 1852 ("What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other.");  August 3, 1852 (" I hear the sound of a distant piano. . . . By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe."); June 5, 1853("The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla. ");February 19, 1854("Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?”); Walden ("Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?"); September 4, 1854("Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her."); September 9, 1854 (" Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures."); January 12, 1855 (" It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."); December 11, 1855 ("I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. Here is no imperfection. The winter, with its snow and ice, is as it was designed and made to be.");December 5, 1856 ('I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too.") February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other."); November 22, 1860 ( I rejoice in the bare, bleak, hard, and barren-looking surface of the tawny pastures, the firm outline of the hills, and the air so bracing and wholesome. Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.").

  Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. They . . .shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down the hill. See November 20, 1857 ("I observed this afternoon how some bullocks had a little sportiveness . . . tossing their hind quarters into the air and shaking their heads at each other")

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. See Walking (1861) ("Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down .He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him . . . The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild and what I have been preparing to say is that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.") See also note to December 18, 1856 HD'Ts paper “Walking or the Wild,” was first been delivered at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. The lecture began with a reference to a Wordsworth poem :

"stepping westward seems to be

a kind of heavenly destiny.”

November 21. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 21

I see Fair Haven Pond

with its island and meadow

between the island

I see my future –

the world suddenly flooded

with a serene light

these forms and colors

so adapted to my eye

we are made to love

pond and meadow as the wind

to ripple water.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Visions Illuminations Inspirations

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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