The poet must be
continually watching
the moods of his mind.
Henry Thoreau, August 19, 1851
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.
Western sunset sky
serene, pure, ineffable
– the unclouded mind.
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.
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-mind
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