The Bedford sunrise bell.

September 13 

Railroad causeway, before sunrise.

Here is a morning after a warm, clear, moonlight night almost entirely without dew or fog.

It has been a little breezy through the night, it is true; but why so great a difference between this and other mornings of late? I can walk in any direction in the fields without wetting my feet.

I see the same rays in the dun, buff, or fawn-colored sky now, just twenty minutes before sunrise, though they do not extend quite so far as at sundown the other night. Why these rays? What is it divides the light of the sun? Is it thus divided by distant inequalities in the surface of the earth, behind which the other parts are concealed, and since the morning atmosphere is clearer they do not reach so far?

Some small island clouds are the first to look red.

The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. You are quite sure you smelled it and are ravished with its sweet fragrance, but now it has no smell. You must not hold it too near, but hold it on all sides and at all distances, and there will perchance be wafted to you sooner or later a very sweet and penetrating fragrance. What it is like you cannot surely tell, for you do not enjoy it long enough nor in volume enough to compare it. 

It is very likely that you will not discover any fragrance while you are rudely smelling at it; you can only remember that you once perceived it.

Both this and the caducous polygala are now somewhat faded.

Now the sun is risen. The sky is almost perfectly clear this morning; not a cloud in the horizon.

The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone. It is unfallen day.

The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musically at this hour, when there is no bustle in the village to drown it. Bedford deserves a vote of thanks from Concord for it. It is a great good at these still and sacred hours, when towns can hear each other. It would be nought at noon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1851

The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will.  See August 27, 1851 ("Polygala cruciata, cross-leaved polygala, has a very sweet but intermittent fragrance, as of checkerberry and mayflowers combined.");); July 13, 1852 ("The Polygala sanguinea and P. cruciata in Blister's meadow, both numerous and well out. The last has a fugacious (?) spicy scent, in which, methinks, I detect the scent of nutmegs. Afterward I find that it is the lower part of the stem and root which is most highly scented, like checkerberry, and not fugacious"); see also August 13, 1856 ("The root of the Polygala verticillata also has the checkerberry odor.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone. See July 3, 1840 (We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves.); July 18, 1851 ("It is a test question affecting the youth of a person , — Have you knowledge of the morning? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity? "); December 29, 1851 ("What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us by letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! . . . This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle."); March 17, 1852 (“There is a moment in the dawn,. . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”); June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes"); June 17, 1852 ("Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year, — after a sultry night and before a sultry day, — when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer's sun or the obscuring haze."); August 31, 1852 ("Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive."); January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”); March 31, 1852("How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning? March 22, 1853 ("As soon as these spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure to be an early riser.. . .expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood."); January 8, 1854 ("The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night."); Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); Walden (“ Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”); Walden ("We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past.")

The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musically at this hour. See January 2, 1842 ("The ringing of the church bell is a much more melodious sound than any that is heard within the church."); August 8, 1851 (“I hear the nine o'clock bell ringing in Bedford. Pleasantly sounds the voice of one village to another. ”); January 2, 1853 ("The bells are particularly sweet this morning."); January 21, 1853 ("In this stillness and at this distance, I hear the nine-o'clock bell in Bedford five miles off, which I might never hear in the village, but here its music surmounts the village din and has something very sweet and noble and inspiring in it, associated, in fact, with the hooting of owls."); ; April 15, 1855 ("The sound of church bells . . ., sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day").  See also  March 3, 1841 ("Nature always possesses a certain sonorousness , as in the hum of insects, the booming of ice, the crowing of cocks in the morning, and the barking of dogs in the night, which indicates her sound state. God's voice is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonderful health, a cordial, in sound. The effect of the slightest tinkling in the horizon measures my own soundness. I thank God for sound; it always mounts, and makes me mount. I think I will not trouble myself for any wealth, when I can be so cheaply enriched.") See also Basho:

As the sound fades,

the scent of flowers comes up –

the evening bell.

September 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 13

Now it has no smell

a fragance you remember –

the sunrise bell.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Bedford sunrise bell

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

A summer begun

 June 8.

J\

June 8, 2018

Here it is the 8th of June, and the grass is growing apace. In the front yards of the village they are already beginning to cut it. The fields look luxuriant and verdurous, but, as the weather is warmer, the atmosphere is not so clear.

In distant woods the partridge sits on her eggs, and at evening the frogs begin to dream and boys begin to bathe in the river and ponds.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

The cars come and go with such regularity and precision, and the whistle and rumble are heard so far, that town clocks and family clocks are already half dispensed with, and it is easy to foresee that one extensive well-conducted and orderly institution like a railroad will keep time and order for a whole country. The startings and arrivals of the cars are the epochs in a village day.

Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in the fields. When the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams then is summer begun.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 8, 1850

 When the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams then is summer begun. See June 8, 1859 ("Within a day or two has begun that season of summer when you see afternoon showers, maybe with thunder, or the threat of them, dark in the horizon, and are uncertain whether to venture far away or without an umbrella.. . .When you go forth to walk at 2 p. m. you see perhaps, in the south west or west or maybe east horizon, a dark and threatening mass of cloud showing itself just over the woods, its base horizontal and dark, with lighter edges where it is rolled up to the light, while all beneath is the kind of dark slate of falling rain. These are summer showers, come with the heats of summer."); See also June 1, 1853 (" Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather."); June 9, 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,. . . It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. . . . It suggests also the creak of crickets, a June sound now fairly begun."); June 11, 1856 ("It is very hot this afternoon, and that peculiar stillness of summer noons now reigns in the woods. "); June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th :• Heat about. 85° at 2 P.M.• Hylodes cease to peep.• Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease.• Lightning-bugs first seen.• Bullfrogs trump generally.• Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome.• Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular.• Sleep with open window.• Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.") and See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Waving grasses, Buttercups, and Shade

The dog lies with his paws hanging over the door-sill this agreeably cool morning.

May 30.

May 30, 2014

The morning wind forever blows; the poem of the world is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.

Forever that strain of the harp which soothed the Cerberus and called me back to life is sounding.

Olympus is the outside of the earth everywhere.

5 A. M. To Cliffs.

High blackberry out.

As I go by Hayden's in the still cool morning, the farmer's door is open — probably his cattle have been attended to — and the odor of the bacon which is being fried for his breakfast fills the air.

The dog lies with his paws hanging over the door-sill this agreeably cool morning.

The cistus out, probably yesterday, a simple and delicate flower, its stamens all swept to one side. It upholds a delicate saffron-golden (?) basin about nine inches from the ground.

As I look off from Fair Haven I perceive that that downy, silvery hoariness has mostly left the leaves (it now comes off on to the clothes), and they are of a uniform smooth light green, while the pines are a dirty dark brown, almost purple, and are mostly merged and lost in the deciduous trees.

The Erigeron bellidifolius is a tender-looking, pale-purple, aster-like flower a foot high in little squads, nodding in the wind on the bare slopes of hill pastures.

Young bush like black cherries a day or two, on Cliffs and in such favorable places.

The hylodes were about done peeping before those last few warm days, — when the toads began in earnest in the river, — but last night being somewhat cooler they were not so loud.

P. M. - To Carlisle Bridge by boat.

A strong but somewhat gusty southerly wind, before which C. and I sailed all the way from home to Carlisle Bridge in not far from an hour; the river unusually high for the season.

Very pleasant to feel the strong, fresh southerly wind from over the water.

There are no clouds in the sky, but a high haziness, as if the moisture drawn up by yesterday's heat was condensed by to-day's comparative coolness.

The water a dull slate-color and waves running high, — a dirty yellow where they break, — and long streaks of white foam, six or eight feet apart, stretching north and south between Concord and Bedford, — without end.

The common blue flag just out at Ball's Hill.

The white maples, especially those shaped like large bushes, on the banks are now full of foliage, showing the white under sides of the leaves in the wind, and the swamp white oak, having similar silvery under sides to its leaves, and both growing abundantly and prevailing here along the river, make or impart a peculiar flashing light to the scenery in windy weather, all bright, flashing, and cheerful.

On the meadows are large yellow-green patches of ferns beginning to prevail.

Passed a large boat anchored off in the meadows not far from the boundary of Concord. It was quite a piece of ocean scenery, we saw it so long before reaching it and so long after; and it looked larger than reality, what with the roaring of the wind in our shrouds and the dashing of the waves. The incessant drifting about of a boat so anchored by a long cable, playing with its halter, now showing more, now less, of its side, is a pleasing sight.

Landed at a high lupine bank by Carlisle Bridge. How many such lupine banks there are! — whose blue you detect many rods off.

There I found, methinks, minute Specularia perfoliata, with small crenate clasping leaves alternate at some distance apart, on upright stems about three inches high, but apparently fruiting in the bud.

Also the Silene antirrhina very abundant there.

The Viola palmata, which is later, and therefore, methinks, fresher than most, is now quite prevalent, one of the most common, in fact, in low ground and a very handsome purple, with more red than usual in its violet.

The pines now dotted with white shoots, the pitch pines a little red dish, are an interesting sight now.

Whence came all those dead suckers, a dozen at least, which we saw floating to-day, some on their sides, transversely barred, some on their backs with their white bellies up and dark fins on each side? Why are they suckers only that we see Can it be because the spearers have thrown them away? Or has some bird of prey dropped them? I rarely see other fish floating.

Melvin gave George Brooks some pink azaleas yesterday, said to have grown in the north part of the town.

The white maple keys falling and covering the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1853

The Erigeron bellidifolius is a tender-looking, pale-purple, aster-like flower a foot high in little squads, nodding in the wind on the bare slopes of hill pastures. See May 29, 1856 ("What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that meadow! Painted Cup, Erigeron bellidifolius, Thalictrum dioicum, Viola Muhlenbergii, fringed polygala, buck-bean, pedicularis, orobanche, etc., etc. Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones”); May 8, 1853 ("It is wonderful what a variety of flowers may grow within the range of a walk, and how long some very conspicuous ones may escape the most diligent walker, if you do not chance to visit their localities the right week or fortnight, when their signs are out.")

The common blue flag just out at Ball's Hill. See June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long?"); June 14, 1853  ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows in this pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shores, and is very beautiful, . . . especially its reflections in the water.; June 15, 1859 ("Blue flag abundant."); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.”)

The Viola palmata, which is later, and therefore, methinks, fresher than most, is now quite prevalent. See May 30, 1852 ("Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac. . . . Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow") See also May 14, 1858 ("Saw the Viola palmata, early form, yesterday; how long?”); May 17, 1853 ("The Viola palmata is out there, in the meadow. ");  May 21, 1855 ("Viola palmata  pretty common, apparently two or three days.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Whence came all those dead suckers? See April 18, 1852 ("The sight of the sucker floating on the meadow at this season affects me singularly"); May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!"); ("When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring")

Melvin gave George Brooks some pink azaleas yesterday, See May 31, 1853 (' I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora. Sophia brought home a single flower without twig or leaf from Mrs. Brooks's last evening. Mrs. Brooks. I find, has a large twig in a vase of water, still pretty fresh, which she says George Melvin gave to her son George. . . . Melvin and I and his dog, - and crossed the river in his boat, and he conducted me to where the Azalea nudiflora grew.")

The white maple keys falling and covering the river. See May 21, 1853 ("The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds"); May 28, 1858 ("See already one or two (?) white maple keys on the water"); May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”); June 9, 1858 ("White maple keys are abundantly floating.")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

The dog lies with his 

paws hanging over the door–

–sill this cool morning.

 uninterrupted –

morning wind forever blows

poem of the world 

    

 

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

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote

May 11.


5 A. M. -- In the morning and evening waters are still and smooth, and dimpled by innate currents only, not disturbed by foreign winds and currents of the air, and reflect more light than at noonday.

P. M. – To Corner Spring via Hubbard's Bathing Place.

The buck-bean is budded, but hard to find now.

The Viola lanceolata is now abundant thereabouts, me thinks larger and quite as fragrant (which is not saying much) as the blanda. How long has it been open? 

May 11, 2019

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow.

I notice that the thin scales are peeling off of one of the painted and curled up more than half an inch at the edges, and others look as if they had just lost them, the dividing-line being of a dull cream color.

Has this lying in the sun anything to do with it? 

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow and a striped snake at the same time. The bird fluttered away almost as if detained. I thought it was a case of charming, without doubt, and should think so still if I had not found her nest with five eggs there, which will account for her being so near the snake that was about to devour her.

The amelanchier has a sickish fragrance.

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp, with a note somewhat like a yellow bird's, striped olive-yellow and black on back or shoulders, light or white beneath, black dim; restless bird; sharp head.

The catbird has a squeaking and split note with some clear whistles.

The late pipes (limosum?), now nearly a foot high, are very handsome, like Oriental work, their encircled columns of some precious wood or gem, or like small bamboos, from Oriental jungles. Very much like art.

The gold-thread, apparently for a day or two, though few flowers compared with buds; not at once referred to its leaf, so distant on its thread-like peduncle.

The water-saxifrage also for a day or two in some places, on its tall, straight stem, rising from its whorl of leaves.

Sorrel now fairly out in some places. I will put it under May 8th.

A high blueberry by Potter's heater piece.

A yellow lily.

The red-eye at the spring; quite a woodland note.

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. The wood thrush Mr. Barnum never hired nor can, though he could bribe Jenny Lind and put her into his cage.

How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds, while I sit by the spring! They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice.  Its twigs feel with pleasure their little feet clasping them.

I hear the distant drumming of a partridge. Its beat, however distant and low, falls still with a remarkably forcible, almost painful, impulse on the ear, like veritable little drumsticks on our tympanum, as if it were a throbbing or fluttering in our veins or brows or the chambers of the ear, and belonging to ourselves, — as if it were produced by some little insect which had made its way up into the passages of the ear, so penetrating is it. It is as palpable to the ear as the sharpest note of a fife.

Of course, that bird can drum with its wings on a log which can go off with such a powerful whir, beating the air. I have seen a thoroughly frightened hen and cockerel fly almost as powerfully, but neither can sustain it long. Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded. 

How many things shall we not see and be and do, when we walk there where the partridge drums! 

As I stand by the river in the truly warm sun, I hear the low trump of a bullfrog, but half sounded, - doubting if it be really July, some bassoon sounds, as it were the tuning that precedes the summer's orchestra; and all is silent again.

How the air is saturated with sweetness on causeways these willowy days! The willow alone of trees as yet makes light, often rounded masses of verdure in large trees, stage above stage. But oftenest they are cut down at the height of four or five feet and spread out thence.

There appear to be most clouds in the horizon on (one) of these days of drifting downy clouds, because, when we look that way, more fall within our field of view, but when we look upward, overhead we see the true proportion of clear blue.

The mountains are something solid which is blue, a terra firma in the heavens; but in the heavens there is nothing but the air.

Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1853

May 11, See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 11

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow. See May 10, 1857 ("Now the Emys picta lie out in great numbers, this suddenly warm weather.")

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow so near a snake that was about to devour her. See May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ")

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. See May 11, 1854 ("The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.")

 How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds . . .  They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice. See May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather."); (May 15, 1859 (“Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. ”);May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”);May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 23, 1857("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,")

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp. See May 1, 1855 ("The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee,"); May 4, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning"); May 7, 1852 (" One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, myrtlebirds among them.")

Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll.  See April 19, 1860 ("You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll.");April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.")

The sky is blue by night as well as by day. See note to January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me.")

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 ©  2009-2021

There are but us three, the moon, the earth and myself.

 August 12

August 12, 2018

Tuesday. 1.30 A. M. — Full moon.

Arose and went to the river and bathed, stepping very carefully not to disturb the household, and still carefully in the street not to disturb the neighbors. I did not walk naturally and freely till I had got over the wall.

Then to Hubbard’s Bridge at 2 A. M.

There was a whip-poor-will in the road just beyond Goodwin’s, which flew up and lighted on the fence and kept alighting on the fence within a rod of me and circling round me with a slight squeak as if inquisitive about me.

I do not remember what I observed or thought in coming hither.

The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate what cloud will obscure the moon and what she will triumph over.

In the after-midnight hours the traveller’s sole companion is the moon.

All his thoughts are centred in her.

She is waging continual war with the clouds in his behalf.

What cloud will enter the lists with her next, this employs his thoughts; and when she enters on a clear field of great extent in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad.

And when she has fought her way through all the squadrons of her foes, and rides majestic in a clear sky, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his heart.

But if he sees that she has many new clouds to contend with, he pursues his way moodily, as one disappointed and aggrieved; he resents it as an injury to himself.

It is his employment to watch the moon, the companion and guide of his journey, wading through clouds, and calculate what one is destined to shut out her cheering light.

He traces her course, now almost completely obscured, through the ranks of her foes, and calculates where she will issue from them.

He is disappointed and saddened when he sees that she has many clouds to contend with.

Sitting on the sleepers of Hubbard’s Bridge, which is being repaired, now, 3 o’clock A. M., I hear a cock crow.

How admirably adapted to the dawn is that sound! as if made by the first rays of light rending the darkness, the creaking of the sun’s axle heard already over the eastern hills.

Though man’s life is trivial and handselled, Nature is holy and heroic.

With what infinite faith and promise and moderation begins each new day! 

It is only a little after 3 o’clock, and already there is evidence of morning in the sky. 

He rejoices when the moon comes forth from the squadrons of the clouds unscathed and there are no more any obstructions in her path, and the cricket also seems to express joy in his song.

It does not concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very important to the traveller, whether the moon shines bright and unobstructed or is obscured by clouds.

It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth when the moon commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been a traveller by night.

The traveller also resents it if the wind rises and rustles the leaves or ripples the water and increases the coolness at such an hour.

A solitary horse in his pasture was scared by the sudden sight of me, an apparition to him, standing still in the moonlight, and moved about, inspecting with alarm, but I spoke and he heard the sound of my voice; he was at once reassured and expressed his pleasure by wagging his stump of a tail, though still half a dozen rods off.

How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes!

And now the first signs of morning attract the traveller’s attention, and he cannot help rejoicing, and the moon begins gradually to fade from his recollection.

The wind rises and rustles the copses.

The sand is cool on the surface but warm two or three inches beneath, and the rocks are quite warm to the hand, so that he sits on them or leans against them for warmth, though indeed it is not cold elsewhere.

As I walk along the side of Fair Haven Hill, I see a ripple on the river, and now the moon has gone behind a large and black mass of clouds, and I realize that I may not see her again in her glory this night, that perchance ere she rises from this obscurity, the sun will have risen, and she will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west (being a little after full (a day?)).

As yet no sounds of awakening men; only the more frequent crowing of cocks, still standing on their perches in the barns.

The milkmen are the earliest risers, — though I see no lan-thorns carried to their barns in the distance, – preparing to carry the milk of cows in their tin cans for men’s breakfasts, even for those who dwell in distant cities.

In the twilight now, by the light of the stars alone, the moon being concealed, they are pressing the bounteous streams from full udders into their milk-pails, and the sound of the streaming milk is all that breaks the sacred stillness of the dawn; distributing their milk to such as have no cows.

I perceive no mosquitoes now.

Are they vespertinal, like the singing of the whip-poor-will? 

I see the light of the obscured moon reflected from the river brightly.

With what mild emphasis Nature marks the spot! — so bright and serene a sheen that does not more contrast with the night.

4 A. M. — It adds a charm, a dignity, a glory, to the earth to see the light of the moon reflected from her streams.

There are but us three, the moon, the earth which wears this jewel (the moon’s reflection) in her crown, and myself.

Now there has come round the Cliff (on which I sit), which faces the west, all unobserved and mingled with the dusky sky of night, a lighter and more ethereal living blue, whispering of the sun still far, far away, behind the horizon.

From the summit of our atmosphere, perchance, he may already be seen by soaring spirits that inhabit those thin upper regions, and they communicate the glorious intelligence to us lower ones.

The real divine, the heavenly, blue, the Jove-containing air, it is, I see through this dusky lower stratum.

The sun gilding the summits of the air.

The broad artery of light flows over all the sky.

Yet not without sadness and compassion I reflect that I shall not see the moon again in her glory.

(Not far from four, still in the night, I heard a nighthawk squeak and boom, high in the air, as I sat on the Cliff. What is said about this being less of a night bird than the whip-poor-will is perhaps to be questioned. For neither do I remember to have heard the whip-poor-will sing at 12 o’clock, though I met one sitting and flying between two and three this morning. I believe that both may be heard at midnight, though very rarely.) 

Now at very earliest dawn the nighthawk booms and the whip-poor-will sings.

Returning down the hill by the path to where the woods [are] cut off, I see the signs of the day, the morning red.

There is the lurid morning star, soon to be blotted out by a cloud.

There is an early redness in the east which I was not prepared for, changing to amber or saffron, with clouds beneath in the horizon and also above this clear streak.

The birds utter a few languid and yawning notes, as if they had not left their perches, so sensible to light to wake so soon, — a faint peeping sound from I know not what kind, a slight, innocent, half-awake sound, like the sounds which a quiet housewife makes in the earliest dawn.

Nature preserves her innocence like a beautiful child.

I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the day.

And the pewee and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed? 

I do not hear— or do not mind, perchance — the crickets now. 

Now whip-poor-wills commence to sing in earnest, considerably after the wood thrush.

The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.

(So you may hear the wood thrush and whip-poor-will at the same time.) 

Now go by two whip-poor-wills, in haste seeking some coverts from the eye of day.

And the bats are flying about on the edge of the wood, improving the last moments of their day in catching insects.

The moon appears at length, not yet as a cloud, but with a frozen light, ominous of her fate.

The early cars sound like a wind in the woods.

The chewinks make a business now of waking each other up with their low yorrick in the neighboring low copse.

The sun would have shown before but for the cloud.

Now, on his rising, not the clear sky, but the cheeks of the clouds high and wide, are tinged with red, which, like the sky before, turns gradually to saffron and then to the white light of day.

The nettle-leaved vervain (Verbena urticifolia) by roadside at Emerson’s.

What we have called hemp answers best to Urtica dioica, large stinging nettle? 

Now the great sunflower’s golden disk is seen.

The days for some time have been sensibly shorter; there is time for music in the evening.

I see polygonums in blossom by roadside, white and red.

A eupatorium from Hubbard’s Bridge causeway answers to E. purpureum, except in these doubtful points, that the former has four leaves in a whorl, is unequally serrate, the stem is nearly filled with a thin pith, the corymb is not merely terminal, florets eight and nine.

Differs from verticillatum in the stem being not solid, and I perceive no difference between calyx and corolla in color, if I know what the two are. It may be one of the intermediate varieties referred to

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1851



1.30 A. M. — Full moon. Arose and went to the river. See July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season..")

There are but us three, the moon, the earth and myself.  See May 16, 1851 (" In the moonlight night what intervals are created! . . . There may be only three objects, — myself, a pine tree, and the moon, nearly equidistant."); September 22, 1854 ("By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted."); See also August 5, 1851 ("Moonlight is like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are. "); July 26, 1852 ("My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.")

It is his employment to watch the moon, the companion and guide of his journey, wading through clouds, and calculate what one is destined to shut out her cheering light. See June 1, 1852 (".The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights")

Now, 3 o’clock A. M., I hear a cock crow. How admirably adapted to the dawn is that sound! as if made by the first rays of light. See July 18, 1851 ("Have you knowledge of the morning ? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity? "); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past.")

She will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west. See April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit.")

There are but us three –

the moon, the earth and myself

(the moon’s reflection).

First signs of morning 

and the moon begins to fade 

from recollection.

The wood thrush, singer, 

invites the day once more to 

enter his pine woods.

Early rising and a morning walk.

December 13

Walk early through the woods to Lincoln to survey. 

Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday. River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over. 

Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk? 

As we walked over the Cedar Hill, Mr. Weston asked me if I had ever noticed how the frost formed around a particular weed in the grass, and no other. It was a clear cold morning. We stooped to examine, and I observed, about the base of the larger pin-weed [cistus], the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. They were very conspicuous, dotting the grass white. But what was most remarkable was that, though there were plenty of other dead weeds and grasses about, no other species exhibited this phenomenon. 

I think it can hardly be because of the form of its top, and that therefore the moisture is collected and condensed and flows down its stem particularly. It may have something to do with the life of the root, which I noticed was putting forth shoots beneath. Perhaps this growth generates heat and so steam. He said that his cows never touched that weed. 

I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. 

I observed a mouse run down a bush by the pond-side. I approached and found that he had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird's nest (it was made partly of sticks like a thrasher's), about four or five feet from the ground, and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss (?) which grows about the base of oaks, but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool, perhaps from the wool-grass. He appeared to be a reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath, and ran swiftly down the stems. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse.

Began to snow at noon. This the third snow; the first lasted half an hour on ground; the second, two or three days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1852

Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk? See  December 13, 1851 ("It seems an age since I took walks and wrote in my journal.");  See also January 10, 1851 ("I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily."); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.”); Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”)

About the base of the [cicstus] the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. See November 11, 1858 ("Frost. . . forming a sort of fool’s cap of different thicknesses, or cockles, or sugar-plums. It seems it is so cool that the frost about the cistus does not melt all day."); See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character."); November 20, 1858 ("The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields."); November 30, 1856 ("Several inches of snow . . . Now see . . . the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust."); December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow.");  December 6, 1856 ("Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides . . . What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! . . . Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed."); December 23, 1859 ("The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds.")

Pinweed (GoBotany)

I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. See December 5, 1852 ("Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is . . . distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter"); November 26, 1858 (“Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years . . . and what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. I begin to suspect, therefore, that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers”)

River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over. See  December 13, 1850 (“The river froze over last night, — skimmed over;”);   December 13, 1857 ("[Goose Pond] and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny 'sides.’’); December 13, 1859 (“My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it.”);  See also December 4, 1853 ("Goose Pond apparently froze over last night, all but a few rods, but not thick enough to bear.”); December 8, 1853 ("Goose Pond now firmly frozen.”); December 27, 1857 ("Goose Pond is not thickly frozen yet . . . in many places water has oozed out and spread over the ice, mixing with the snow and making dark places.”)

He had neatly covered over a bird's nest and lined it warmly with  green moss. See  February 3, 1856 (“Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice."); February 18, 1857 ("Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow. It is about five inches wide and three or four high, with one, if not two, small round indistinct entrances on the side . . . It is made very firmly and round, far more so than an oven-bird's nest, of the rye and grass stubble which was at hand under the snow, gnawed off to convenient lengths. A very snug and warm nest, where several might have lain very cosily under the snow in the hardest winter . . . Is it not the nest of a different mouse from the Mus leucopus of the woods?") See also note to October 8, 1853 (“Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest ”)

Maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse. Compare August 25, 1858 (“The short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. . . . above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse ("Most of Thoreau's observations of wild mice are either the meadow mouse or deer mouse.  Thoreau calls the meadow mouse or  "short-tailed meadow mouse," Arvicola hirsuta -- now known as Microtus  pennsylvanicus,  meadow Vole.")

Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday . . . Began to snow at noon. This the third snow; the first lasted half an hour on ground; the second, two or three days. See November 16, 1852 ("Colder weather and very windy, but still no snow."); November 23, 1852 ("This morning the ground is white with snow, and it still snows. This is the first time it has been fairly white this season, though once before, many weeks ago, it was slightly whitened for ten or fifteen minutes.”) Νου.  29, 30, and Dec. 1, 1852 ("The snow which fell the 23d whitened the ground but a day or two." December 1, 1852 ("The snow keeps off unusually."); December 2, 1852 ("Still no snow."); December 12, 1852 ("Cold at last . . . I see snow on the mountains. Last night's rain was snow there, then.)"

Why have I ever 

omitted early rising 

and a morning walk?

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Early rising and a morning walk

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/hdt521213

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.

February 25

When it snowed yesterday very large flakes, an inch in diameter, Aunt said, “They are picking geese.” This, it seems, is an old saying.

Heard Staples, Tuttle, E. Wood, N. Barrett, and others this morning at the post-office talking about the profit of milk-farming. The general conclusion seemed to be that it was less profitable than it was three years ago. Yet Staples thought he could name half a dozen who had done well. He named one. He thought he could name eight or ten who had paid off the mortgages on their farms by this means within a few years. Tuttle said he would give him a good supper if he would name three. Staples named only the one referred to above, David Buttrick, but he added, looking at Tuttle, “There is yourself. You know you came to town with nothing in your pocket but an old razor, a few pennies, and a damned dull jack-knife, and n’t used the razor so much.”  

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse. 

I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street. I think that they are heard oftener and again at the approach of spring, just as the phoebe note of the chickadee is; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring. 

Joe Smith says that he saw blackbirds this morning. I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago. So the birds are quite early this year. 

P. M. —Up river on ice.

I see a handful of the scarlet Rosa Carolina hips in the crotch of a willow on some mud, a foot or more above the ice. They are partly eaten, and I think were placed there by a musquash. The rose bush, with a few hips on it, still stands in the ice within a few feet. Goodwin says he has seen their tracks eight or ten rods long to an apple tree near the water, where they have been for apples. 

Along edge of Staples’s meadow sprout-land, the young maples, some three years old, are stripped down, i. e. the lower branches for a foot or two, by the ice falling. This barks and wounds the young trees severely. 

The ice over the middle of the river is now alternately dark and whitish. I see the river beginning to show dark through the thinnest parts, in broad crescents convex up-stream, single or connected. 

A good book is not made in the cheap and offhand manner of many of our scientific reports, ushered in by the message of the President communicating it to Congress, and the order of Congress that so many thousand copies be printed, with the letters of instruction for the Secretary of the Interior (or rather exterior); the bulk of the book being a journal of a picnic or sporting expedition by a brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, illustrated by photographs of the traveller’s footsteps across the plains and an admirable engraving of his native village as it appeared on leaving it, and followed by an appendix on the palaeontology of the route by a distinguished savant who was not there, the last illustrated by very finely executed engravings of some old broken shells picked up on the road. 

There are several men of whose comings and goings the town knows little. I mean the trappers. 

They may be seen coming from the woods and river, perhaps with nothing in their hands, and you do not suspect what they have been about. They go about their business in a stealthy manner for fear that any shall see out-of-the-way swamps and meadows and brooks to set or examine their traps for musquash or mink, and the owners of the land commonly know nothing of it. But, few as the trappers are here, it seems by Goodwin’s accounts that they steal one another’s traps.

All the criticism which I got on my lecture on Autumnal Tints at Worcester on the 22d was that I assumed that my audience had not seen so much of them as they had. But after reading it I am more than ever convinced that they have not seen much of them, — that there are very few persons who do see much of nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1859

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. See August 23, 1853 ("Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.”); Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and note to March 17, 1857 (“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring”)

I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring. See February 24, 1854 (“Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”); March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. . . . It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch. . . . This herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so close to the bark.");April 25, 1859 (" I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago. February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 28, 1860 ("C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

February 25. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 25  

Feel your pulse – measure

your health by your sympathy

with morning and spring.

If the first bluebird 

does not thrill you– the morning  

of your life is past.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Measure your health 

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-590225