A meteorological journal of the mind.

 

The poet must be

continually watching

the moods of his mind.

Henry Thoreau, Auguat 19, 1851

I’ve heard within my inmost soul

Such cheerful morning news,

In the horizon of my mind

A Week, ("The Inward Morning")

July 23, 1851.  The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth.   

August 17, 1851 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. 

August 17, 1851   Ah ! if I could so live that . . . when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also!  that I could match nature always with my moods!  that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish!

 August 18, 1851 It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness. 

August 19, 1851. The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind . . . What might we not expect from a long life faithfully spent in this wise? . . . A faithful description . . . of the thoughts which visited a certain mind in threescore years and ten . . . A meteorological journal of the mind.

August 28, 1851 The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods.  An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

August 30, 1851  I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.

A cold afternoon

windy with some snow not yet

melted on the ground.

My eye wanders as

I sit on an oak stump by

an old cellar-hole.

Methinks that in my 

mood I am asking Nature 

to give me a sign.

Transient gladness.

I do not know what it is –

something that I see.

This recognition

from white pines now reflecting

a silvery light.

Where is my home? 

It is as indistinct as 

an old cellar-hole. 

And  by the old site

I sit on the stump of an

oak which once grew here.

November 30, 1851

December 27, 1851  The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset . . . The sky is always ready to answer to our moods.

January 17, 1852.  As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. 

January 26, 1852.  Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.

February 3, 1852 .  The sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few moods; nor is the evening the less serene for them.

March 5, 1852.  Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens.  . . . The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk. 

May 9, 1852. Our moods vary from week to week, with the winds and the temperature and the revolution of the seasons.  It is impossible to remember a week ago. A river of Lethe flows with many windings the year through, separating one season from another.

June 25, 1852.  There is a flower for every mood of the mind.

August 25. 1852. At length, before sundown, it begins to rain . . . and now, after dark, the sound of it dripping and pattering without is quite cheering. It is long since I heard it . . . something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind.

March 22, 1853  I am waked by my genius, surprised to find myself expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood.

March 31, 1853    It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.  

Distant mountain top

as blue to the memory

as now to the eyes.

March 31, 1853

May 17, 1853 I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing . . . It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been.

May 23, 1853   Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind. 

June 14, 1853  This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home . . . you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then the dews begin to descend in your mind, and its atmosphere is strained of all impurities; and home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you. There is a coolness in your mind as in a well. 

August 7, 1853.  [The poet] sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought . . . The objects I behold correspond to my mood.

July 31, 1856.  I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.

Thoughts of autumn and

the memory of past years

occupy my mind.

July 31, 1856

 August 18, 1856 I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound . . . It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy.

September 2, 1856 It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood.

June 6, 1857. A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.

October 26, 1857. The seasons and all their changes are in me  . . .  After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. 

November 2, 1857.  It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. I am aware often that I have been occupied with shallow and commonplace thoughts, looking for something superficial, when I did not see the most glorious reflections, though exactly in the line of my vision. 

November 18, 1857.  You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

January 23, 1858.  It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.

August 26, 1858 Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours.

November 17, 1858.  Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons.

August 20, 1858 The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. 

December 25, 1858.  How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.

 April 24, 1859.  The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s.

 September 24, 1859.  I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sportsman knows when to look for plover.

January 18, 1860,   They are very different seasons in the winter when the ice of the river and meadows and ponds is bare, — blue or green, a vast glittering crystal, — and when it is all covered with snow or slosh; and our moods correspond.

February 18, 1860  Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.

 September 18, 1860  If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

 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

Each experience

reduces itself to a mood

of the mind. 

June 6, 1857  

;

 

Nature disguised as mind.

February 19.

I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. 

The large moths apparently love the neighborhood of water, and are wont to suspend their cocoons over the edge of the meadow and river, places more or less inaccessible, to men at least.

I see a button-bush with what at first sight looks like the open pods of the locust attached. They are the light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.

Though the particular twigs on which you find some cocoons may never or very rarely retain any leaves, — the maple, for instance, — there are enough leaves left on other shrubs and trees to warrant their adopting this disguise. Yet it is startling to think that the inference has in this case been drawn by some mind that, as most other plants retain some leaves, the walker will suspect these also to.

Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. It was long ago, in a full senate of all intellects, determined how cocoons had best be suspended, — kindred mind with mine that admires and approves decided it so.

Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 19, 1854

The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig. See January 19, 1854 ("The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it"); June 2, 1855 (“that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia”); ;May 17, 1857 ("Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf stalk.

Not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. See December 17, 1853 ("a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons,. .with dry alder and fragments of fern leaves attached to and partially concealing them”); December 24, 1853 ("I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. The worm has evidently said to itself: "Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it.”); January 14, 1857 ("What kind of understanding was there between the mind that determined that these leaves should hang on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it?”)

Who placed us? See  February 19, 1857 ("Why do water and snow take just this form?"); April 18, 1852 ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? Why should I hear the chattering of black-birds, why smell the skunk each year? .. why just this circle of creatures completes the world?”); Walden ("Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?”Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors.?"); 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.")

The unclouded mind

January 17.

One day two young women — a Sunday — stopped at the door of my hut and asked for some water. I answered that I had no cold water but I would lend them a dipper. They never returned the dipper, and I had a right to suppose that they came to steal. They were a disgrace to their sex and to humanity. Pariahs of the moral world. Evil spirits that thirsted not for water but threw the dipper into the lake. Such as Dante saw. What the lake to them but liquid fire and brimstone? They will never know peace till they have re turned the dipper. In all the worlds this is decreed.

In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. 

That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer. 

What is your thought like? 

That is the hue, that the purity, and transparency, and distance from earthly taint of my inmost mind. 

For whatever we see without is a symbol of something within, and that which is farthest off is the symbol of what is deepest within. The lover of contemplation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky. 

Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.  

Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.

As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.

The world run to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go out to see.

"Evergreens" would be a good title for some of my things, — or " Gill-go-over-the-Ground," or " Winter- green," or " Checkerberry," or "Usnea Lichens," etc., etc. "Iter Canadense." . . . Methinks there might be a chapter, when I speak of hens in the thawy days and spring weather on the chips, called " Chickweed " or " Plantain."

It appears to me that at a very early age the mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual power becomes some thing defined and limited. He does not think expansively, as he would stretch himself in his growing days. What was flexible sap hardens into heart-wood, and there is no further change. In the season of youth, methinks, man is capable of intellectual effort and performance which surpass all rules and bounds; as the youth lays out his whole strength without fear or prudence and does not feel his limits. It is the transition from poetry to prose. The young man can run and leap; he has not learned exactly how far, he knows no limits. The grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He has no strength to waste.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 17, 1852

The necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. See December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour."); January 17, 1860 ("There was a splendid sunset. The northwest sky at first was what you may call a lattice sky,. . ., in which the clouds, which were uninterrupted overhead, were broken into long bars parallel to the horizon."); see also December 31, 1851 ("I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth. ");  January 14, 1852 ("I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw."); January 26, 1852 (" Would you see your mind, look at the sky."); and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days. As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. See  July 23, 1851 ("The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth."); December 27, 1851 ("The sky is always ready to answer to our moods."); January 26, 1852 (" Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds. See December 11, 1854 ("That peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.”); December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset."); December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset?"); ; December 31, 1851 ("I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset ") January 24, 1852 ("Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown."); July 23, 1852 ("As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

January 17. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 17

The unclouded mind

serene pure ineffable –

like the western sky. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The unclouded mind

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-520117

*****

In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky before sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.

 What is your thought like?

That is the hue, that the purity, and transparency, and distance from earthly taint of my inmost mind, for whatever we see without is a symbol of something within, and that which is farthest off is the symbol of what is deepest within.

 The lover of contemplation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky.

 Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.

 The rainbow is the symbol of the triumph which succeeds to a grief that has tried us to our advantage, so that at last we can smile through our tears.

 It is the aspect with which we come out of the house of mourning.

 We have found our relief in tears.

 As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind.

 Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents ; some rarely look up at all ; their heads, like the brutes ', are directed toward earth.

 Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.

 The world run to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go out to see. . . .


Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds, for then there is wont to be a vapor more generally diffused, especially near the horizon, which, in cloudy days, is absorbed, as it were, and collected into masses ; and the vistas are clearer than the unobstructed cope of heaven. The endless variety in the forms and texture of the clouds! — some fine, some coarse grained. I saw to night overhead, stretching two thirds across the sky, what looked like the backbone, with portions of the ribs, of a fossil monster. Every form and creature is thus shadowed forth in vapor in the heavens.

Night fruit

April 1.

The fruit a thinker bears is sentences, - statements or opinions. He seeks to affirm something as true.

I am surprised that my affirmations or utterances come to me ready-made, - not fore-thought, - so that 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. There is such a necessity to make a definite statement that our minds at length do it without our consciousness.

This occurred to me last night, but I was so surprised by the fact which I have just endeavored to report that I have entirely forgotten what the particular observation was.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1860

... thought by sympathy with the universal mind ... while we were asleep. See March 17, 1852 ("I make the truest observations and distinctions then, when the will is yet wholly asleep and the mind works like a machine without friction. I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual, and made observations and carried on conversations which in my waking hours I can neither recall nor appreciate. As if in sleep our individual fell into the infinite mind, ... On awakening we resume our enterprise, take up our bodies and become limited mind again."); February 19, 1854  ("The mind of the universe . . ., which we share . . .")