A year is made up of
a certain series and number
of sensations and thoughts
which have their language in nature.
Henry Thoreau, June 6, 1857
On the first spring day
we first hear the pheobe note
of the chickadee.
March 1, 1856
Two hawks scream like wind
through a crevice in the sky -
that cracked blue saucer.
March 2, 1855
The bluebird
The bluebird – which some
woodchopper or inspired
walker said to have
seen in that sunny
interval between the snow-
storms like a speck of
clear blue sky near the
end of a storm reminding
us of a heaven
we had forgotten –
bluebird comes with his warble
and drills the ice and
sets free the rivers and ponds
and frozen ground.
March 2, 1859
Fully blossomed cone.
Winged black seeds half fill my hand
like tiny fishes.
March 3, 1855
A hawk rises and
sails away over the Wood
as in the summer.
"And for the first time
I see the water looking
blue on the meadows."
March 5, 1854
Slender black birches
with gracefully catkined twigs
drooping on all sides.
March 6, 1859
The first pleasant days
of spring come out like a squirrel
and go in again.
See a small flock of
grackles on the willow-row
above railroad bridge.
March 8, 1860
The face of nature
lit up by reflections in
still water in Spring.
March 9, 1854
Misty and muzzling,
weather almost April-like.
Expect to hear geese.
March 10, 1854
Landscape nearly bare
distant mountains white with snow,
song sparrow’s first song.
March 11, 1854
First open water.
Two ducks on river before
I have launched my boat.
March 12, 1855
I hear the rapid
tapping of the woodpecker
over the water.
March 13, 1855
The wind begins to
play in dark ripples over
the virgin water.
March 14, 1860
On this mild spring day
my life partakes of bluebirds
and infinity.
March 15, 1852
A flock of red-wings,
how handsome as they go by,
bright scarlet shoulders
March 16, 1860
Whistling overhead
swift propellers of the air
flying with great force.
March 17, 1860
The snow is off the
mountains, which seem to have come
again like the birds,
their blue scalloped rim
a deeper and warmer blue
than winter, methinks.
A spring landscape as
impossible a fortnight
ago as birdsong.
The note of each bird
remembered like a dream when
we hear it again.
How happens it that
each new year is always
a pleasing surprise?
March 18, 1858
The flower in spring
expects a winged visitor
knocking at its door.
March 18, 1860
Sandy-bottomed brook
flowing cold from ice and snow:
fins poised over sand!
March 19, 1854
The life and joy of
this new ribbon of water
sparkling in the sun.
March 20, 1853
Thirty ducks asleep
with heads on backs, motionless –
ice forms about them.
Maple twigs gnawed off
in the winter by rabbits,
the sap now flowing.
March 22, 1856
Sitting on this rock
we hear the first wood frog’s croak
and begin to dream.
March 23, 1859
Freshly cut pine wood
world of light and purity
its life oozing out.
March 24, 1853
Willows near Mill Brook
surprise me at a distance--
green, yellowish, red!
Withered tawny grass
now brightly lit by the sun,
fore-glow of the year.
March 26,1860
The hazel is out
at this cold leafless season
greeting the spring.
March 27, 1853
Smoky maple swamps
now have a reddish tinge from
their expanding buds.
March 28, 1852
A gull of pure white
outline simple and wave-like
two curves in the air.
March 29, 1854
Crossing the threshold
between winter and summer,
shoes instead of boots.
March 30, 1860
Distant mountain top
as blue to the memory
as now to the eyes.
March 31, 1853
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March Days
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
