A Book of the Seasons: A Pleasing Melancholy

A year is made up of a certain series and 

number of sensations and thoughts 

which have their language in nature . . .

 Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. 

Henry Thoreau, June 6, 1857

I hear a cricket

and am penetrated with 

the sense of autumn. 

August 4, 1851

A sound reminds me

past autumns, lapse of time – so

little brought to pass.

August 18, 1856

May 24. Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret . . . the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible . . . it is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence.  May 24, 1851

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

August 17.   I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. It saves my life from being trivial. My life flows with a deeper current, no longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and shrunken by the summer heats. This coolness comes to condense the dews and clear the atmosphere. August 17, 1851

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

August 18. What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now? — now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit? August 18, 1853 

August 18.  I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail.  Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass!  August 18, 1856 

August 20.  There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. August 20, 1858

August 28. In my experience, at least of late years, all that depresses a man's spirits is the sense of remissness, — duties neglected, unfaithfulness, — or shamming, impurity, falsehood, selfishness, inhumanity, and the like.  August 28, 1854

August 28. Perchance you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle's pace. August 28, 1856

October 26. I awoke this morning to infinite regret. October 26, 1851

October 31. I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things.  October 31, 1860

See also 

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer midlife blues

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  A Pleasing Melancholy

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdtmelancholy

Infinite regret

October 26

I awoke this morning to infinite regret.

In my dream . . .  I was in my own small pleasure-boat, learning to sail on the sea , and I raised my sail before my anchor, which I dragged far into the sea. I saw the buttons which had come off the coats of drowned men, and suddenly I saw my dog –when I knew not that I had one – standing in the sea up to his chin, to warm his legs . . .

And then I was walking in a meadow . . .  and there I met Mr. Alcott, and we fell to quoting and referring to grand and pleasing couplets and single lines which we had read in times past; and I quoted one which in my waking hours I have no knowledge of, but in my dream it was familiar enough. I only know that those which I quoted expressed regret, and were like the following, though they were not these:

 "The short parenthesis of life was sweet,"

"The remembrance of youth is a sigh," etc.

The instant that I awoke, methought I was a musical instrument from which I heard a strain die out, a bugle, or a clarionet, or a flute.  My body was the organ and channel of melody, as a flute is of the music that is breathed through it. My flesh sounded and vibrated still to the strain, and my nerves were the chords of the lyre . . .

I heard the last strain or flourish, as I woke, played on my body as the instrument. Such I knew I had been and might be again, and my regret arose from the consciousness how little like a musical instrument my body was now . . . 

I awoke, therefore, to an infinite regret, — to find myself, not the thoroughfare of glorious and world-stirring inspirations, but a scuttle full of dirt . . .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1851

I awoke this morning. See May 24, 1851 ("Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret . . . the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible. . . My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and, in the act of reentering its native body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around . . .It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence."); June 12, 1851 ("Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear."); June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind.”);; July 16, 1851 ("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us"); March 17, 1852 ("I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual"); September 12, 1853 ("It occurred to me when I awoke this morning . . . that man was to be treated as a musical instrument, and if any viol was to be made of sound timber and kept well tuned always, it was he, so that when the bow of events is drawn across him he may vibrate and resound in perfect harmony. A sensitive soul will be continually trying its strings to see if they are in tune."); December 19, 1856 ("For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously "); October 29, 1857 ("Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground between dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind . . . we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. "); January 15, 1857 ("What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps?"); November 30, 1858 ("I can only think of precious jewels, of music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life. "); August 27, 1859 ("All our life, i.e. the living part of it, is a persistent dreaming awake.");  November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream."); April 1, 1860 ("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.") and Walden (“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”)

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

I knew I had been 

and might be again and 

my regret arose.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Infinite regret

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

The sad surprise of remembering our past lives

May 24 

Saturday. 

Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret. Our regret is so sublime that we may mistake it for triumph. It is the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible.

It is a regret so divine and inspiring, so genuine, based on so true and distinct a contrast, that it surpasses our proudest boasts and the fairest expectations. 

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and, in the act of reentering its native body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around. 

The Genius says: 

"Ah! That is what you were! That is what you may yet be!” 

It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence. 

A sane and growing man revolutionizes every day. What institutions of man can survive a morning experience? 

A single night's sleep, if we have indeed slumbered and forgotten anything and grown in our sleep, puts them behind us like the river Lethe. It is no unusual thing for him to see the kingdoms of this world pass.

It is remarkable that men commonly never refer to, never hint at, any crowning experiences when the common laws of their being were unsettled and the divine and eternal laws prevailed in them. Their lives are not revolutionary; they never recognize any other than the local and temporal authorities.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, May 24, 1851

A kind of regret . . . the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible. See  August 18, 1851 ("It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness"); October 26, 1851 ("I awoke this morning to infinite regret.");  August 18, 1856 ("I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket. . .It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail."): August 20, 1858 ( There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning.  March 17, 1852 (“I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual . . . There is a moment in the dawn . . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”); November 23, 1852 ("I had a thought in a dream last night which surprised me by its strangeness, as if it were based on an experience in a previous state of existence, and could not be entertained by my waking self. Both the thought and the language were equally novel to me, but I at once perceived it to be true and to coincide with my experience in this state. );  Walden (“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); October 29, 1857 ("Such early morning thoughts as I speak of . . . are a sort of permanent dream in my mind . . . we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced."); April 1, 1860 (“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”)

May 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 24 

The sad surprise of

remembering our past lives –

glorious regret.

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

Past autumns and the lapse of time

August 18

P. M. — To Beck Stow's.

Now, perhaps, get thoroughwort. The lecheas in the Great Fields are now turning red, especially the fine one. 

August 18, 2016

As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta,

looking for the blackberries left after the rain, 

the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, 

I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. 

It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass! 

Hear a faint-warbling bird amid birches and pines. Clear-yellow throat and breast, greenish-yellow head, conspicuous white bar on wings, white beneath, forked tail, bluish legs. Can it be pine warbler? The note, thus faint, is not like it. See black and white creeper. 

Yellow Bethlehem-star yet, and indigo. 

Saw yesterday and some days before a monster aphis some five eighths of an inch long on a huckleberry leaf. I mistook it, as before, for a sort of loose-spun cocoon. It was obovate, indistinctly ribbed, of long, loose, white, streaming down, but being touched it recoiled and, taken off the leaf, rolled itself into a ball. The father of all the aphides.

OEnothera pumila still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1856

I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. See August 18, 1851 ("How early in the year it begins to be late! The sound of the crickets, even in the spring, makes our hearts beat with its awful reproof, while it encourages with its seasonable warning"); See also  August 4, 1856 (" Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached."); August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn.") ; August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time . . . so little brought to pass!  See ; August 18, 1851 ("It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness") August 18, 1853 ("What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now, — as if the rest of the year were down-hill, and if we had not performed anything before, we should not now? . . .The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life. The sound of so many insects and the sight of so many flowers affect us so,. . . They say, 'For the night cometh in which no man may work.'"); .August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ?); See also July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 20, 1858 ("This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. "); August 29, 1854 ("Early for several mornings I have heard the sound of a flail. It leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer midlife blues

Yellow Bethlehem-star yet. [Hypoxis erecta, or Hypoxis hirsuta, commonly known as yellow or  common star-grass] See June 15, 1851 ("The Hypoxis erecta, yellow Bethlehem-star . . . should be called yellow-eyed grass, methinks."); June 5, 1855 ("Yellow Bethlehem-star in prime.");  August 24, 1853 ("Yellow Bethlehem-star still."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Bethlehem-star

Indigo. See July 17, 1852 ("Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo-weed, yellow with blossoms."); July 25, 1853 ("Bunches of indigo, still in bloom, more numerously than anywhere that I remember"); August 6, 1858 ("indigo, ' ' 'is still abundantly in bloom. "); August 17, 1851 ("Indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side,")

A monster aphis some five eighths of an inch long on a huckleberry leaf. See August 26, 1856 ("Another monster aphis on a huckleberry leaf.")

August 18. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau August 18

A sound reminds me.

Past autumns, lapse of time – so

little brought to pass.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Past autumns and the lapse of time

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-560818

In search of lost time.

The man on a precipice of anticipation
leaps directly into memory,
missing the moment.
A life of regret.
Tomorrow was a time for everything.

zphx

Precipice

Ineffable woman
ripples with anticipation
         the unexpected splash 
         the interesting man
         the edge of hope
a pool of regret.

ZPHX 20101216
with apologies to white and thurber:

The ineffability of woman
The complexity of the male
The importance of what he is thinking
And what he intends to do. 

Find your eternity in each moment.

April 24

There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season.

There is a time to watch the ripples on Ripple Lake, to look for arrowheads, to study the rocks and lichens, a time to walk on sandy deserts; and the observer of nature must improve these seasons as much as the farmer his. So boys fly kites and play ball or hawkie at particular times all over the State. A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it.

We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us.

The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's.

Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! 

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land.

There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this.

Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil.

Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets.

Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1859


Man's moods and thoughts revolve just as steadily and incessantly as nature's. The observer of nature must improve these seasons. 

A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. There is a time to watch the ripples on Ripple Lake, to look for arrowheads, to study the rocks and lichens, a time to walk on sandy deserts. There is a season for everything.

Let the season rule us. Let us be vessels sailing prosperously before the wind. There is no other life but this, or the like of this. Nothing must be postponed.

Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Live in the present. On any other course life is a succession of regrets.

We do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season. See November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.”);  Augusr 24, 1852 ("Everything is done in season, and there is no time to spare."); May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant")

Let the season rule us. See August 23, 1853 ("Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit . . . Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn. Drink of each season's influence as a vial, a true panacea of all remedies . . .For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well.“)

You must live in the present,  See January 7, 1851(“There is no account of the blue sky in history. I must live above all in the present.”)

Find your eternity in each moment. See Walden ("I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line."): See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, There was an artist in the City of Kouroo and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Day's Devotion

Launch yourself, find your

 eternity in each moment –

live in the present. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Find your eternity in each moment.

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

There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season. There is a time to watch the ripples on Ripple Lake, to look for arrowheads, to study the rocks and lichens, a time to walk on sandy deserts; and the observer of nature must improve these seasons as much as the farmer his. So boys fly kites and play ball or hawkie at particular times all over the State. A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us. The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-590424