A summer rain.

July 14.

July 14, 2014

Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month, methinks. The cooler and stiller day has a valuable effect on my spirits. 

P. M. — Over the Hill to Brown's watering-place. 

A fine, misty rain falls. It lies on the fine reddish tops of some grasses, thick and whitish like morning cobwebs. The stillness is very soothing. 

This is a summer rain. The earth is being bedewed. There is no storm or violence to it. 

Health is a sound relation to nature.

Anychia plenty by the watering-place (with the amphicarpaea), but calyx apparently not expanded. Amphiearpaea, not yet. 

Penthorum, three or four days. 

Xyris, apparently three or four days in meadow close by. Hardhack, two or three days. 

A hedyotis still. Elodea to-morrow. 

The red capsules of the Hypericum ellipticum, here and there. This one of the fall-ward phenomena in still rainy days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1854

Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month. See July 13, 1854 (“In the midst of July heat and drought.”); August 19, 1854 ("There is now a remarkable drought.") September 10, 1854 ("September 1st and 2d, the thunder-shower of evening of September 6th, and this regular storm are the first fall rains after the long drought.”)

Health is a sound relation to nature. See July 12, 1851 ("Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be well."); August 23, 1853 ("For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health.”); December 16, 1853 ("Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature");   May 28, 1854 (“To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe”); June 5, 1854 (“I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature. ”);   Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.”); November 18, 1857 ("Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health.”);  January 23, 1858 ("To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one; . . . I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for Nature.").

The red capsules of the Hypericum ellipticum. See July 19, 1856 ("It is the Hypericum ellipticum . . . whose red pods are noticed now.");July 26, 1856 ("The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Awake to day of

gentle rain – a summer rain.

The earth is bedewed.

The cooler and stiller day 

 effects my spirits.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. A summer rain.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540714

Now begins the year's dark green early afternoon (The seasons of the day, the year . . . a life.)

August 23

August 23, 2013

Observing the blackness of the foliage, especially between me and the light, I am reminded that it begins in the spring, the dewy dawn of the year, with a silvery hoary downiness, changing to a yellowish or light green, — the saffron-robed morn, — then to a pure, spotless, glossy green with light under sides reflecting the light, — the forenoon, — and now the dark green, or early afternoon, when shadows begin to increase, and next it will turn yellow or red, — the sunset sky, — and finally sere brown and black, when the night of the year sets in.

I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day — say an August day — and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year. Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.

Poke stems are now ripe. I walked through a beautiful grove of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of Lee's Cliff, where they have ripened early. Their stems are a deep, rich purple with a bloom, contrasting with the clear green leaves. Its stalks, thus full of purple wine, are one of the fruits of autumn. It excites me to behold it. What a success is its! What maturity it arrives at, ripening from leaf to root! 

May I mature as perfectly, root and branch, as the poke! It is a royal plant. I could spend the evening of the year musing amid the poke stems.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines. In August live on berries. Be blown on by all the winds. 

Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of Nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons. Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn. Drink of each season's influence as a vial, a true panacea of all remedies mixed for your especial use. 

For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health. 

Some men think that they are not well in spring, or summer, or autumn, or winter; it is only because they are not well in them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1853

The perfect correspondence of a day and the year. See August 19, 1853 (“The day is an epitome of the year.”)

Live in each season as it passes. See April 24 1859 (Find your eternity in each moment)

Seasons of life. See July 3, 1840 (We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves.); October 7, 1851 (There is a great difference between this season and a month ago, -- as between one period of your life and another); November 14, 1853. (October answers to that period in the life of man when he is no longer dependent on his transient moods, when all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root, branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit.); January 30, 1854 (We are not to suppose that there is no fruit left for winter to ripen. It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of his brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. Then is the great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars…)

Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. See December 16, 1853 (Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature); July 14, 1854 (Health is a sound relation to nature). See also Walden (" Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.").



The blackness of the
foliage between me and
the light reminds me

it begins in spring,
the dewy dawn of the year,
silver downiness,

the saffron-robed morn,
a yellowish or light green,--
then pure glossy green

undersides reflect
the light, — the forenoon -- and now
early afternoon,

the dark green shadows
begin to increase, and next
it will turn yellow

or red, — the sunset --
finally black when the night
of the year sets in.

Now begins the year's

dark green early afternoon

when shadows increase.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The year's

dark green early afternoon

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-530823

This life in the present.

November 4.

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.  This life in the present. 

Let a man have thought what he will of Nature in the house, she will still be novel outdoors.  I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.

My thought is a part of the meaning of the world, and hence I use a part of the world as a symbol to express my thought.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1852

This life in the present. See January 7, 1851 ("I must live above all in the present.")”); January 26, 1852 (“My life as essentially belongs to the present as that of a willow tree in the spring.")

I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me. See September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day."); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”); July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”);