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CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

 

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT
FUND GIVEN IN I89I BY
HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE

 

 

 

 

 
‘ornell University Library

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THROUGH THE YEAR WITH THOREAU
 

 

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THOREAW:

SITE OF
THROUGH THE YEAR
WITH THOREAU

BY

HERBERT W. GLEASON

‘ SKETCHES
OF NATURE FROM THE WRITINGS OF

Henry D. Thoreau
a

v
WITH CORRESPONDING PHOTOGRAPHIC

ILLUSTRATIONS

 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1917

1
BE
509305

COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN « CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY HERBERT W. GLEASON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published July 1917
“There is no flower so sweet as the four-petalled flower which
science much neglects ; one grey petal it has, one green, one red,
and one white.”

Emerson.
PREFACE

THOREAU writes in his journal, under date of De-
cember 10, 1856: “It is remarkable how suggestive
the slightest drawing as a memento of things seen.
For a few years past I have been accustomed to make
a rude sketch in my journal of plants, ice, and various
natural phenomena, and though the fullest accom-
panying description may fail to recall my experience,
these rude outline drawings do not fail to carry me
back to that time and scene. It is as if I saw the same
thing again, and I may again attempt to describe it
in words if I choose.”

The present volume is an endeavor to go a step be-
yond Thoreau’s sketches and to reproduce, with the
aid of photographs, some of the outdoor scenes and
natural phenomena in which he delighted and which
he has so graphically described. The series of views
is limited, of necessity, but a sufficient number are
given to illustrate Thoreau’s method of nature-study
as well as to emphasize anew the accuracy and felicity
of his nature-descriptions. It is hoped, also, that this
combination of verbal and pictorial representation
will stimulate to a wider apprehension and a more
vivid realization of the Beautiful in Nature, — thus
continuing, in a measure, Thoreau’s self-appointed
mission.
[ vii J

Variety has been sought, first of all, in the selection
of subjects, though obviously many of Thoreau’s
favorite themes could not be included, — being be-
yond the scope of the camera, — such as the music of
the telegraph harp, the crowing of chanticleer, the
fragrance of sweet-fern, the chirping of crickets, the
flavor of wild apples, the “‘z-ing”’ of locusts, ete. In
the arrangement of subjects the course of the seasons
has been followed, although it has not been possible
always to keep an exact succession of dates.

The quotations are chiefly from the Journal, the
page numbers referring to the Walden Edition of
1906. It has not been deemed necessary to indicate
in every case where an ellipsis occurs. The journal
being largely a commonplace-book, Thoreau would
occasionally interject comments quite remote from
the subject in hand; and therefore, in order to secure
greater simplicity and conciseness, sometimes a brief
portion of the original journal entry is here omitted.
In two or three instances, also, a very slight verbal
alteration has been made.

In reading these journal extracts it should be re-
membered that they were never considered by Thor-
eau as finished literature. They were frequently writ-
‘ten hurriedly, with his own convenience solely in view,
and left for final polishing and arrangement at some
later date. Yet this very fact adds a flavor of sin-
cerity and piquancy to the journal which would per-
haps have been lost in a studied preparation, with
c ik J
more attention given to proportion and correlation.
Thoreau himself says, “I do not know but thoughts
written down thus in a journal might be printed in
the same form with greater advantage than if the
related ones were brought together into separate
essays.”

With respect to the photographs, it may be said
that they were taken by the author with the sole
purpose of securing, in every case, as close a corre-
spondence as possible with Thoreau’s description.

Artistic considerations were wholly secondary.
Boston, April, 1917.
CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Site of Thoreau’s House at Walden Pond

INTRODUCTION

Thoreau’s Journals
At the Leaning Hemlocks

Frontispiece

From Crest of Fair Haven Hill across River to Conantum
Up River and Down River from Hubbard’s Bridge

Thoreau’s Cove, Walden Pond
Walden Pond in May and in December
Spaulding’s Farm and Cranberry Meadow

SPRING:

Sand Foliage .

Willow Catkins .

Skunk-Cabbage

Winkle-like Fungi

The Old Marlborough Road cn.
Crossbills at the Leaning Hemlocks .
Cowslips

Houstonias

Mayflowers

Wood Anemones

Rabbits and Partridges (Rabbit in gots

A Partridge Nest

Bird-foot Violets

Fringed Polygala

May Foliage .

Barn Swallow

Vesper Sparrow (Bay-wing)

DDD SF w

10
12
14
16
16

1¢
20
20
22
24
24
[ xi J
Apple Blossoms
Beauty of Wild Apples .
Loring’s Pond :
A Lilac Bush — the Last nanad a a Home
Rhodora
Wild Pink
Ferns in the Woods
Flowering Dogwood

SUMMER:

Pincushion Galls

A Nighthawk’s Nest ,
Red-winged Blackbirds and Nest
Clintonia

Early Morning Fog ee Ncwaliew uiak Hill |
Buttercups by the Roadside .
Lupines

Lady’s-slippers

Wild Calla Lily

Great Fringed Orchis

White Pond

Mountain Laurel

Trees reflected in the River

Wild Roses

Water-Lilies

Orientation of Young Pine Shoots
A June Landscape from Fair Haven Hill
White Clover

Tarbell’s Spring

A Waving Rye-field

Yellow and Red Lilies

An Old Unfrequented Road

26
26
28

30
30
32
32

36
36
38
40
42
44
44
46
46
48
50
50
52
54
56
58
60
60
62
64
66
68
~ xiii J

Blueberries and Huckleberries  . : : : ‘ 70
Yew Berry. : : : : ‘ : : . 72
Rattlesnake-plantain ‘ 5 ; 3 ‘ ‘ 12
Rose Mallow . : ; ; ‘ ‘ ‘ 5 . A
Cinnamon Ferns in Clintonia Swamp ‘ , ‘ 76
AUTUMN:
Beautiful Fungi ‘ : : ‘ ; ‘ : 80
Lane in front of Tarbell’s ‘ ‘ : . f . 82
Sunset on the River . : ; ‘ é : ‘ 84
Goldenrod. 2 3 ; 3 : é ‘ . 86
Fall Asters ‘ : . : ‘ 5 i 88
Witch-hazel . ‘ ‘ ‘ : : . 90
October Reflections on the Resdhiet : ‘ 3 92
Sun-lighted Tufts of Andropogon . ‘ é j » 992
Cobweb Drapery in Barrett’s Mill. : ‘ , 94
Fringed Gentian. : : 3 : 2 ‘ . 96
Fallen Leaves. ; i : ‘ zs ‘ ‘ 98
Late Green Ferns . : ; . ‘ i ‘ . 100
Polypody . : : : . 100
Nature’s Decoration of an Old sa i ‘ : . 102
November Woods. : : i - 104
Fair Haven Bay through ine Woods ‘ 3 2 . 106
Shrub Oak Leaves. : ‘ i ‘ ‘ . 108
WINTER:
A Winter Scene from Lee’s Cliff. é ‘ : . 112
Frost Crystals. : ‘ a , ji . . 114
Architecture of the Snow ‘ 3 . A : . 116
Tracks in the Snow . j ‘ : “ . 118
After the Ice Storm ; i ‘ ‘ : . 120

Heavy Snow on Pitch Pines. ‘ : ‘ . 122
[ xiv J

The Swamp in Winter . 124
A Lodging Snow ‘ z 126
The Brook in Winter. i ‘ ‘ ‘ ; - 128
The River as a Winter Highway ‘ ‘ ; . 128
The Tracks of a Fox. ; i ; . : . 130
Icicle “‘Organ-Pipes”’ 132
North Branch near Harrington’s . 132

134

Winter (poem) . ‘ “ ‘ i é :
INTRODUCTION

‘‘Above man’s aims his nature rose.
The wisdom ofa just content
Made one small spot a continent,

And tuned to poetry life’s prose.”

Henry Davin Tuoreav was born in Concord,
Massachusetts, July 12, 1817, and died there, May 6,
1862. With the exception of brief periods of absence
during childhood and youth, a few excursions in adult
years to the Maine Woods, the White Mountains,
Cape Cod, Quebec, and other easily reached localities,
and one longer trip to Minnesota in 1861 in the effort
to recover his health, his whole life was spent within
the limits of his native town. This was a distinction
in which he rejoiced. ‘I cannot but regard it,” he
says, “‘as a kindness in those who have the steering
of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have
been nailed down to this my native region so long and
steadily, and made to study and love this spot of
earth more and more. What would signify in com-
parison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the
whole earth instead, got by wandering?” And yet
there are intimations here and there in his journal
that he would have delighted in extensive travel
abroad. Few men have ever lived who possessed so
keen an appreciation of the attractiveness of the out-
[ xvi J
ward world, and few have been so thoroughly alive to
the advantages of world-wide travel. But this ex-
perience was denied him, and all he could say was, “T
have travelled a great deal — in Concord.”

And Thoreau’s travels were to some purpose. They
did not. terminate with his own enjoyment. For the
greater part of his life he kept a careful and extended
record of his daily excursions and observations, ac-
companied with a multitude of first-hand — often
elaborate — moral and philosophical meditations and
generalizations, all written in a chaste and pictur-
esque style, and all intended to serve a literary pur-
pose. Thoreau’s vocation was that of a writer, — he
had as many trades, he declared, as he had fingers,
but literature was his chosen field, — and all his activ-
ity, whether bodily or mental, was devoted to this
one end. Thirty-seven good-sized closely written vol-
umes! contain the story of his “travels,” while other
volumes, previously written, were used in the making- -
up-of the two books which were published during his
lifetime, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,

1 With regard to these manuscript volumes, Thoreau’s complaint will
be recalled: ‘‘I cannot easily buy a blank book to write thoughts in; they
are all ruled for dollars and cents!’? Channing tells us that, in consequence
of this difficulty, Thoreau was accustomed to purchase blank paper and
bind up his journals to suit himself. He was extremely economical in the
use of his material, oftentimes writing on the backs of old letters and
crowding his journal pages with notes. In one case, however (as shown in
the photograph reproduced herewith), there was a conspicuous depar-
ture from this rule, for he devotes an entire page to the single entry: “ Feb.
3d. Five minutes before 3 p.m. Father died.”
[ xvi J

and Walden. It was from this storehouse, also, that
the books entitled Excursions, The Maine Woods, and
Cape Cod, were prepared, partly by Thoreau himself
and partly by his literary executors; and when Thor-
eau’s complete works were published for the first time,
in 1906, the Journal filled fourteen of the twenty
volumes.! “For a long time,”’ he once wrote, ‘“‘I was
reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation,
whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk
of my contributions, and, as is too common with
writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However,
in this case my pains were their own reward.” “Pains”
for Thoreau, doubtless, but great satisfaction, de-
light, and inspiration for thousands of readers in after
years.

In his studies afield Thoreau sought to cover a wide
range of subjects, — botany, zodlogy, geology, ar-
cheology, etc., — while in writing up his notes he com-
bined the ethical, the esthetic, and the scientific with
the literary. Naturally, such a voluminous produc-

1 As indicating the lack of appreciation on the part of his fellow towns-
men toward Thoreau, the following incident was told the writer by the
late Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Travelling one day on the
railway with Judge E. Rockwood Hoar, an eminent citizen of Concord,
Colonel Higginson happened to remark that there was some likelihood of
Henry Thoreau’s journals being published. ‘‘Henry Thoreau’s journals?”
exclaimed Judge Hoar. “Pray tell me, who on earth would care to read
Henry Thoreau’s journals?” The answer to Judge Hoar’s query was
found in the fact that when these journals in their complete form were
first announced for publication (with some misgivings, it is said, on the
part of the publishers), the entire edition was subscribed for before half
the volumes were printed.
[ xvi J

tion, made up of contributions from such a variety of
sources, often written hastily and without revision,
is not free from defects; but they are defects which
are easily passed over by the discriminating reader in
the face of so much that bears the hall-mark of genius.
Thoreau’s journal may be compared to a choice Turk-
ish rug, of original, intricate, and yet admittedly
beautiful pattern. The lines of the pattern do not all
run geometrically true, and occasionally, here and
there, a strand appears which is not quite in tune
with its surroundings. Notwithstanding, the pattern
is singularly consistent, harmonious, and satisfying,
every feature contributing faithfully to the unity of
the design. The colors are fast, even when subjected
to the most rigorous tests; there is no needless fringe
or superficial lustre; while in point of durability, it
promises to outlast a thousand rugs of the ordinary
sort.

Thoreau’s interest, in all his outdoor studies, was
centred chiefly upon life. The rocks and ledges held
his attention only as they revealed a story of change.
Thawing sand overflowing the snow was to him a wel-
come token of Nature’s vitality. He delighted in run-
ning brooks, but stagnant pools were of value only as
mirrors for the living landscape. November, with its
bareness and desolateness, was the hardest month of
the year for him to get through. As for museums, with
their stuffed specimens, he positively hated them —
“catacombs of nature.’ He felt compelled to visit
DAVNGILUL ouaymausi

 

 
[ xix ]
them at rare intervals to get confirmation for some
of his scientific observations, but he queries, ‘‘ What
right have mortals to parade these things on their legs
again, with their wires, and, when heaven has decreed
that they shall return to dust again, to return them to
sawdust?” and he affirms, ‘“‘I have had my right-per-
ceiving senses so disturbed in these haunts as to mis-
take a veritable living man for a stuffed specimen,
and surveyed him with dumb wonder as the strangest
of the whole collection.” Thoreau was a naturalist of
the best type, but he was no “‘collector.”” In Emer-
son’s phrase, he “named all the birds without a gun,
loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk.”” Once

 

 

when a farmer came to him and offered to him as a nat-
uralist a two-headed calf which his cow had brought
forth, Thoreau was utterly disgusted and began to
catechize himself, asking what enormity he had com-
mitted that such an offer should be made to him!
And not merely life, but human life was the thing
of greatest concern in his estimation, around which
everything else must revolve. ‘‘Nature must be
viewed humanly to be viewed at all,” he declares;
“that is, her scenes must be associated with humane
affections, such as are associated with one’s native
place, for instance. A lover of Nature is preéminently
a lover of man.” “I am not interested in mere phe-
nomena, though it were the explosion of a planet, only
as it may have lain in the experience of a human
being.”’ And once-more: “Nature is beautiful only as
[ xx J

a place where a life is to be lived. It is not beautiful
to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life.”
Never was greater mistake made than to charge Thor-
eau with being a misanthrope. His aloofness from men
and his contempt for the conventionalities of society
were due to the fact that his ideals were so much
higher than those which he found generally prevail-
ing. One of his most pregnant utterances is quoted
by Dr. Edward Emerson, himself a boy-friend of
Thoreau’s: “If I do not keep step with others it is
because I hear a different drummer. Let a man step
to the music which he hears, however measured and
however far away.”

Thoreau’s glorification of Concord — not histori-
cal or literary or social or agricultural Concord, but
outdoor Concord — is the supreme compelling feature
of his journal writing. No writer in all literature has
so exalted the place of his birth and recorded so fully
and so entertainingly its manifold attractions. Gilbert
White of Selborne is a remote second. And Thoreau
was absolutely sincere. “I have never got over my
surprise,” he writes, “‘that I should be born into the
most estimable place in the world, and in the very
nick of time too.”” Winter and summer, day and night,
through cold and heat, he explored the fields and
woods and water-courses of Concord, rejoicing in the
recurrence of the seasons, and invariably returning
with new treasures of beauty or interest for his jour-
nal record. “I take all these walks to every point of
[ xxi

the compass, and it is always harvest-time with me.
I am always gathering my crop from these woods and
fields and waters, and no man is in my way or inter-
feres with me.’ So intimate was his relation with
these outdoor surroundings and the fleeting phenom-
ena of the year that he could say, “These regular
phenomena of the seasons get at last to be simply and
plainly phenomena or phases of my life. Almost I be-
lieve the Concord River would not rise and overflow
its banks again, were I not here.”’ He illustrated ab-
solutely his own dictum: “To insure health, a man’s
relation to Nature must come very near to a personal
one; he must be conscious of a friendliness in her;
when human friends fail or die, she must stand in the
gap to him. I cannot conceive of any life which de-
serves the name, unless there is a certain tender rela-
tion to Nature. This it is which makes winter warm,
and supplies society in the desert and wilderness.”
He was ever “looking into nature with such easy sym-
pathy as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks in
the face of the sky.”

One cannot escape the impression, in reading Thor-
eau’s Journal, that he considered Concord’s resources
in the realm of nature-study practically boundless.
He was continually noting correspondences between
the phenomena of his limited environment and those
of foreign climes. Emerson records that on returning
a borrowed volume of Kane’s Arctic Explorations, he
remarked that “‘most of the phenomena noted might
[ xxi J

be observed in Concord.” Sometimes this extolling of
his native region was too much for the patience of his
listeners. One lady — the mother of Senator Hoar —
complained, ‘‘ Henry talks about Nature just as if she
had been born and brought up in Concord.” (This
remark, of course, was intended as a mild criticism,
but Concord people to-day are inclined to view it as
really involving a threefold compliment: a compli-
ment to the speaker for her unconscious discernment
of Thoreau’s genius, a compliment to Thoreau for his
lofty appreciation of Nature, and a compliment to
Nature herself as indicating her good sense in being
willing to be born and brought up in Concord!)

It is not necessary, however, to assume that Na-
ture wears a special halo in Concord. Doubtless Mr.
Emerson was correct in saying: “‘I think his fancy for
referring everything to the meridian of Concord did
not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other
longitudes or latitudes, but was rather a playful ex-
pression of his conviction of the indifferency of all
places, and that the best place for each is where he
stands. He expressed it once in this wise: ‘I think
nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould
under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any
other in this world, or in any world.’” Or, as Thor-
eau said in another place: “Think of the consummate
folly of attempting to go away from here! When the
constant endeavor should be to get nearer and ‘nearer
here. Take the shortest way round and stay at home.
[ xxii |
A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its
calyx, like an acorn in its cup.”

The simple facts are these. Concord is a typical
New England town. Outside of the village which
clusters around the post-office, court-house, and
churches, the inhabitants are chiefly farmers, who
preserve much of the simplicity of early colonial days
— or they did in Thoreau’s time — while considerable
areas of land still remain uncultivated. In its land-
scape features Concord presents a pleasing combina-
tion of field and meadow, hill and dale, lake and river,
swamp and woodland. In the spring and summer
there is everywhere a luxuriance of floral and animal
life, varied and lovely; in autumn there are the bril-
liant tints of departing foliage and an abundance of
fruits; in winter there is the soft purity of the snow
and the delicate beauty of frost crystals. The visitor
to Concord at any season of the year does not need
to discount Thoreau’s enthusiasm to appreciate the
true charm of his surroundings. To be sure, the hills
of Concord are tame as compared with those found
in many towns of northern and western New England,
yet the views from their summits are peculiarly pic-
turesque and appealing. Not long ago the writer
piloted to the crest of Fair Haven Hill — one of
Thoreau’s dearest shrines — an English friend with
whom he had recently been mountain-climbing in the
Canadian Rockies. This friend, a world-wide traveller
and an alpinist of international fame, notwithstanding
[ xxiv J

that he was fresh from scenes of superlative grandeur
in the Canadian Alps, was enthusiastic over the view
from this little hill, declaring it one of the most beau-
tiful he had ever seen. After all, Thoreau’s comment
applies to any view, from whatever summit: “There
is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape
as we are prepared to appreciate, — not a grain
more’’; and if he could see more from Annursnack
Hill than most people can see from the top of Pike’s
Peak, — why, the simple truth is that he was better
prepared to appreciate what he saw.

The years which have passed since Thoreau wrote
the last page in his journal have witnessed many
changes in Concord — some of which he would have
welcomed but most of which he would have deplored.
White Pond and the Leaning Hemlocks were long
ago “‘prophaned”’ by the railway. Baker Farm, Lee’s
' Hill, Conantum, Fair Haven Hill, Nashawtuc, Punk-
atasset, Bear Hill, and Three Friends’ Hill are crowned
by sumptuous private residences. Large areas over
which Thoreau used to roam, exulting in their wild-
ness and freedom, are now placarded everywhere with
the forbidding sign ‘‘No Trespassing.” Clamshell
Bank, that priceless (to him) relic of Indian days,
comes within the domain of a large hospital. The
J. P. Brown Farm now belongs to the Concord Coun-
try Club, and its extensive grass lands in which Thor-
eau took peculiar delight have been'converted into
an elaborate golf course, Nut Meadow Brook, which
 

 

 

FROM CREST OF FAIR HAVEN HILL ACROSS RIVER TO CONANTUM
[ xxv ]

flows through the centre, forming a notable hazard.
Flint’s Pond has been made a source of water-supply
for Lincoln and Concord, and Bateman’s Pond is
staked out with a rowing course for a boys’ private
school near by. Thoreau and his co-saunterer Chan-
ning were desperately aggrieved one day to find that
“‘a new staring house” had been erected just beyond
Hubbard’s Bridge, “thereby doing irreparable in-
jury to a large section of country for walkers.” “It
obliges us,”’ he complained, “‘to take still more steps
after weary ones to reach the secluded fields and
woods,” and they talked of petitioning the owner to
remove the house and thus abate a nuisance. What
would the two friends say to-day on finding the same
house, not only greatly enlarged and made still more
conspicuous, but surrounded by a whole cluster of
similar ornate dwellings? And then looking in the op-
posite direction, imagine their indignation on behold-
ing the sacred slopes of Fair Haven Hill taken up with
“‘gventlemen’s estates,” with their lawns, gardens, and
tennis courts!

But there has been one compensation for this pri-
vate appropriation of choice portions of the land-
scape. “‘No Shooting” is a more frequent sign than
“No Trespassing,”” and these extensive estates thus
guarded are proving places of refuge for many forms
of wild life which in Thoreau’s day were the free booty
of unrestrained hunters. Partridges and gray squir-
rels are multiplying, pheasants (lately introduced)
[ xXxvi
are thriving, rabbits rear their young undisturbed,
and even deer have been repeatedly seen in Concord
within recent years, — the last-named a circumstance
which Thoreau would have rejoiced to record in let-
ters of gold.

There are, however, many sections of Concord
which remain in practically the same state of wild-
ness which made them so attractive to Thoreau, and
one can easily find the same birds and flowers and
witness the same phenomena of the advancing sea-
sons. Best of all, Walden Pond —the one locality in
Concord which is most closely associated with Thor-
eau in the public mind — is little changed from what
it was when Thoreau built his famous hut by its shore
and there lived the unique hermit life of which he has
given so full an account in Walden. For a number of
years the Fitchburg Railroad took advantage of its
proximity to the pond to exploit it as a picnic resort,
and every summer thousands of people were brought
to its shores to enjoy “a day off”: boating on the
pond, swinging in the pines, patronizing the lemon-
ade-stands and bowling-alleys, and then going away
and leaving the usual assortment of lunch-boxes,
waste paper, peanut-shells, etc., — the whole a pro-
ceeding which would surely have brought sorrow to
Thoreau’s heart. But there came a blissful day when
the picnic buildings burned up, and they were never
replaced, so that once more the pond assumed its
serene attitude and has retained it ever since. Much
 

 

 

 

 

UP RIVER AND DOWN RIVER FROM HUBBARD’S BRIDGE
[ XxXvil J]

of the preservation of the beauty of Walden is due to
the ‘‘Emerson children” (Dr. Edward Waldo Emer-
son and Mrs. Edith Emerson Forbes), who own a
great portion of the land bordering the pond and are
determined that no changes shall take place so long
as it is in their control.

Close by the site of Thoreau’s hut, at the head of
the “Deep Cove,” there has been erected a huge
cairn of stones, each visitor to the spot contributing
a stone to the pile. This commemorative idea origi-
nated with Bronson Alcott, the Concord philosopher,
whose axe Thoreau borrowed when he began the
construction of his hut, and whom he afterwards
described as “the man of most faith of any alive.”
Alcott’s tribute to Thoreau has often been quoted: —

“Much do they wrong our Henry wise and kind,
Morose who name thee, cynical to men,
Forsaking manners civil and refined
To build thyself in Walden woods a den, —
Then flout society, flatter the rude hind.

We better knew thee, loyal citizen!
Thou, friendship’s all-adventuring pioneer,
Civility itself would civilize.”’

There is an indescribable charm about the scenery
of New England which is most keenly felt by those
whose early life has been passed under its spell. It
was the lot of the writer to be exiled (speaking sub-
jectively) from New England for a period of some
sixteen years, this period being spent in the State of
Minnesota. There was much of interest found in
[ xxvii J
the new surroundings; but the fertility of the prai-
ries, the wide reach of the primitive forests, the
novelty and affluence of the wild flowers and birds,
did not prevent an occasional craving for the sight
of a bit of New England barrenness, — such as a
rocky pasture, bounded by stone walls and dotted
with creeping junipers, or a few of New England’s
commonest flowers, — buttercups, or houstonias, or
ox-eye daisies. It was at this time that the writer
first became acquainted with the portions of Thor-
eau’s journal published in the eighties by his friend,
Mr. H. G. O. Blake; and the reading of these, with
their vivid delineation of characteristic New Eng-
land scenes, sacredly cherished in memory, aroused
a passionate longing to visit the region so intimately
described by Thoreau and enjoy a ramble among
his beloved haunts. Consequently, at the close of
the “exile” above noted, an early opportunity was
seized to visit Concord, with camera in hand, and
many photographic mementos were taken of locali-
ties associated with Thoreau. But this was only the
beginning. During the fifteen years succeeding, the
writer has made frequent pilgrimages to Concord,
under all conditions of season and weather, searching
out places and objects described by Thoreau, tread-
ing in his footsteps so far as they were discoverable,
and bringing back photographs of all that was most
interesting.! Out of many hundred views thus taken

1 Lest any should assume that the fondness for New England scenery
 

 

 

 

THOREAU’S COVE, WALDEN POND
[ xxix 7]

a brief series is chosen for reproduction in this
volume.

Some of the experiences in connection with these
Concord excursions are perhaps worth noting.

First of all, they were self-rewarding, entirely
apart from their historical or personal interest. A
breezy walk over Concord meadows or uplands far
exceeds in exhilaration and inspiration any after-
noon upon a golf course or any conceivable trip in
a motor-car.

Confirmation was found again and again of Thor-
eau’s descriptive accuracy. Certain flowers, for exam-
ple, were traced unerringly merely from his journal
notes.

Confirmation, likewise, of the thoroughness of his
observations in the field was frequently noted. Re-
peatedly upon these rambles some scene or object
was photographed simply because it seemed to pos-
sess exceptional interest, without reference to any
relation which it might have to Thoreau, and then
afterwards it was found that the identical scene or
object was carefully described in his journal. Very
few facts in the realm of natural history escaped his
recording pen.

here avowed is due to a lack of acquaintance with other regions more
famous for their grandeur, it may be stated that during this same period
the writer made two trips to Alaska, six to California and the Pacific
Coast, three to the Grand Cajion of Arizona, seven to the Canadian
Rockies, two to Yellowstone Park, and three to the Rocky Mountains of
Colorado. Yet, after every one of these trips, it was a genuine delight to
return to the simple beauty of New England.
[ xxx ]

Still another confirmation, of a different sort, was
found in the duplication of Thoreau’s experience
with regard to the solitariness of his walks. More
than once he comments upon this. ‘‘There are said
to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet
I find such ample space and verge, even miles of
walking every day in which I do not meet nor see a
human being, and often not very recent traces of
them. Methinks that for a great part of the time,
as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing the
advantages of human culture, fresh from the society
of men, but turned loose in the woods, the only man
in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent
as if man and his customs and institutions were not.”
It seems strange, but it is a fact, that during all these
fifteen years of frequent rambling among the fields
and woods of Concord the writer has never yet met
with a single other person bent upon a similar errand.
This, of course, merely happened so; we did not
chance to meet, that is all. The “Walking Associa-
tion”? of Concord has not yet disbanded, and it is
not fair to conclude that Thoreau’s gospel of the
outdoor life which he so vigorously preached has
been wholly lost upon the residents of his native
town.

There was a peculiar fascination in hunting down
localities to which Thoreau had given names after
an arbitrary method of his own, and without any
regard whatever for their possible recognition by

Xu
 

 

 

 

WALDEN POND IN MAY AND IN DECEMBER
[ xxxl ]

other people. Ripple Lake, Cardinal Shore, Bittern
Cliff, Owl-Nest Swamp, Arethusa Meadow, Curly-
Pate Hill, Purple Utricularia Bay, Bidens Brook,
Hubbard’s Close, — these and many similar names
are capitalized and otherwise dignified in his journal
records just as if he were speaking of London or Paris
or New York. But where were these places? It was
useless to appeal to residents of Concord. They
might as well have been situated in Siberia or Pata-
gonia. Even persons still living who had known
Thoreau personally and had occasionally been with
him on some of his walks were hopelessly in the dark
as to most of them. Ellery Channing, author of a
life of Thoreau, and his most frequent walking com-
panion, who lingered forty years after the death of
his friend and associate, was appealed to in connec-
tion with two or three localities, but his memory was
afterwards proved to be sadly at fault.

It was only by a careful comparison of all the jour-
nal references to each locality, the examination of a
large number of Thoreau’s manuscript surveys pre-
served in the Concord Library, and especially by
following out on the ground Thoreau’s tramps afield,
that finally the greater number of these localities
were identified.

One amusing incident occurred in connection with
the effort to locate ‘“Spaulding’s Farm.” Readers
of the volume entitled Excursions will perhaps recall
that Thoreau makes this farm the subject of one of
[ xxxi 7]

his most notable parables: “I took a walk on Spauld-
ing’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting
sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine
wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the
wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if
some ancient and altogether admirable and shining
family had settled there in that part of the land called
Concord, unknown to me. J saw their park, their
pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in
Spaulding’s cranberry meadow,” etc. But the most
diligent inquiry failed to locate this place. Finally,
a good lady of Concord came to the rescue. She said,
“IT know an old man who used to drive a butcher’s
cart through this part of the country, and he will
know if anybody does.” So, meeting him shortly
after, she said, ““Mr. D., can you tell me where
Spaulding’s Farm used to be in Concord?” “Spauld-
ing’s Farm?” —the old man thought a moment.
“There never was any such place in Concord,
ma’am.” “‘But Henry Thoreau says there was, in his
journal.” “Henry Thoreau?” — with an expression
of undisguised contempt — “I knew Henry Thoreau |
ever since he was a boy, and I never had much of an
opinion of him. And I hain’t seen nothing since to
change my mind!”

But Spaulding’s Farm was eventually discovered,
—not in Concord, but in Carlisle, the village just
to the north which used to be a part of Concord, —
and a visit to the farm proved most interesting. The
 

Dee ae
<7 ora

 

 

 

SPAULDING’S FARM AND CRANBERRY MEADOW
[ xxx J

old homestead, aged two hundred years, still stands;
the “‘cranberry meadow”’ was readily found, but the
“stately pine wood”’ long since fell before the axe.
It must have been a magnificent grove, judging from
the size of the stumps which still remain. Needless
to say, no vestiges of the ‘“‘altogether admirable and
shining family”’ were discovered, but Thoreau would
doubtless find, if he were living to-day, that they
had simply removed their domicile to some other
part of Concord.

It is curious to note how little Thoreau was es-
teemed by most of his fellow villagers. He was com-
monly regarded as a sort of ne’er-do-well, squander-
ing his time in roaming over the fields and up and
down the river, rarely shooting or fishing, and with
no sensible object in view. To be sure, he some-
times did a job at surveying or whitewashing or
fence-building, and he helped his father occasionally
at pencil-making; but that he actually had a “pro-
fession’” — such an idea could not be tolerated for a
moment. Yet Thoreau had a profession, and this is
his own statement of it: —

“ My profession is to be always on the alert to find God
in Nature, to know his lurking places, to watch for and de-
scribe all the divine features which I can detect in Nature.”

This profession he followed faithfully and un-
swervingly. Nothing more deeply impresses itself
upon the mind of one who reads Thoreau’s Journal
sympathetically, especially if that reading be in the
[ XXxiv ]

atmosphere of the scenes which he describes, than
the conviction that Thoreau possessed a profoundly
religious nature. He would not have chosen the
adjective, but it is abundantly evident that his walks
afield were to him religious excursions, — seasons of
communion with the Unseen. To quote a modern
phrase, he was ever seeking to be “in tune with the
Infinite.””’ That was a significant remark which he
made upon his dying bed to his aunt, who, with
kindly intent, urged him to “make his peace with
God.” He simply said, “‘I have never quarreled with
Him.” Notwithstanding his misjudged criticism of the
churches and his intolerance of creeds, he possessed
a creed of his own, and it is well worth quoting: —

“T know that I am. I know that Another is who
knows more than I, who takes interest in me, whose
creature, and yet whose kindred, in one sense, am I.
I know that the enterprise is worthy. I know that
things work well. I have heard no bad news.”

If we were to search for the crowning moral of
Thoreau’s life and writings, perhaps we could find it
nowhere more truly or more beautifully expressed
than in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his
neighbor and friend: —

“The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery:
Though baffled seers cannot impart
The secret of its laboring heart,
Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.”
I. SPRING
C2]
SAND FOLIAGE

Frew phenomena gave me more delight than to
observe the forms which thawing sand and clay as-
sume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut! on the
railroad through which I passed on my way to the
village, a phenomenon not very common on so large
a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks
of the right material must have been greatly multi-
plied since railroads were invented. The material
was sand of every degree of fineness and of various
rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When
the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a
thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow
down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out
through the snow and overflowing it where no sand
was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams
overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a
sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the
law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. .. .
It is truly a grotesque vegetation, whose forms and
color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architec-
tural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus,
chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves.

Walden, 336, 337.

1 The ‘‘Deep Cut” was despoiled of its magnitude some years ago, a
large section of its easterly bank being removed for grading purposes
elsewhere. Sufficient of the original sand-and-clay formation still remains,

however, to furnish annually the same unique phenomenon in which
Thoreau delighted. H. W. G.
 

 

 

 
C3]

Marcu 2, 1854. The sand foliage is vital in its
form, reminding me of what are called the vitals of
the animal body. I am not sure that its arteries are
ever hollow. They are rather meandering channels
with remarkably distinct sharp edges, formed instan-
taneously as by magic. How rapidly and perfectly
it organizes itself! ... On the outside all the life of
the earth is expressed in the animal or vegetable, but
make a deep cut in it and you find it vital; you find
in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable
leaf. No wonder, then, that plants grow and spring
in it. The atoms have already learned the law. Let
a vegetable sap convey it upwards and you have a
vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses
itself outwardly in leaves, which labors with the idea
thus inwardly. The overhanging leaf sees here its
prototype.

Journal, vi, 148.
C4]
WILLOW CATKINS

Marcu 2, 1859. The willow catkins by the rail-
road have now all crept out about an eighth of an
inch, giving to the bushes already a very pretty ap-
pearance when you stand on the sunny side, the sil-
very-white specks contrasting with the black scales.
Seen along the twigs, they are somewhat like small
pearl buttons on a waistcoat. Go and measure to
what length the silvery willow catkins have crept out
beyond their scales, if you would know what time o’
the year it is by Nature’s clock.

Journal, xu, 4.

Marcu 20, 1858. At Hubbard’s wall, how hand-
some the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright
silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools
in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which
their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from
the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from
beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have
thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness
at base on a close inspection. These fixed swarms of
arctic buds spot the air very prettily along the hedges.
They remind me somewhat by their brilliancy of the
snow-flecks which are so bright by contrast at this
season when the sun is high. Is not this, perhaps, the
earliest, most obvious, awakening of vegetable life?

Journal, x, 310.
 
eo

Apri 11, 1856. You take your way along the edge
of some swamp that has been cleared at the base of
some south hillside, where there is sufficient light and
air and warmth, but the cold northerly winds are
fended off, and there behold the silvery catkins of the
sallows, which have already crept along their lusty
osiers, more than an inch in length, till they look like
silvery wands, though some are more rounded, like
bullets. The lower part of some catkins which have
lost their bud-scales emit a tempered crimson blush
through their down, from the small scales within.
The catkins grow longer and larger as you advance
into the warmest localities, till at last you discover
one catkin in which the reddish anthers are beginning
to push from one side near the end, and you know that
a little yellow flame will have burst out there by to-
morrow, if the day is fair.

Journal, vit, 276.
Le]
SKUNK-CABBAGE

Marcu 18, 1860. I examine the skunk-cabbage,
now generally and abundantly in bloom all along
under Clamshell. It is a flower, as it were, without
a leaf. All that you see is a stout beaked hood just
rising above the dead brown grass in the springy
ground now, where it has felt the heat, under some
south bank. The single enveloping leaf, or “spathe,”
is all the flower that you see commonly, and those are
as variously colored as tulips and of similar color, —
from a very dark almost black mahogany to a light
yellow streaked or freckled with mahogany. It is a
leaf simply folded around the flower, with its top
like a bird’s beak bent over it for its further protec-
tion, evidently to keep off wind and frost, with a
sharp angle down its back. These various colors are
seen close together, and their beaks are bent in vari-
ous directions.

Journal, xin, 199.

WINKLE-LIKE FUNGI

Apri 13, 1854. Saw an old log, stripped of bark,
either poplar or maple, four feet long, — its whole
upper half covered with that handsome winkle-like
fungus. They are steel-colored and of a velvety
appearance, somewhat semicircular, with concentric
growths of different shades, passing from quite black
 
Le esl

within through a slaty-blue to (at present) a buff
edge. Beneath cream-color. There are many minute
ones a tenth of an inch in diameter, the shell-like leaf
or ear springing from one side. The full-grown are
sometimes united into one leaf for eight or nine
inches in one level along the log, tier above tier, with
a scalloped edge. They are handsomest when two or
more are opposed, meeting at their bases, and make
a concentric circle. They remind you of shells, also
of butterflies. The great variety and regularity of
the shading are very interesting. They spring from
a slight base, rising by a narrow neck. They grow
on stumps and other dead wood on land, even drift-
wood left high, just as some marine shells, their rela-
tives, grow on driftwood.
Journal, v1, 196.
Ee
THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD

WHEN the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the Old Marlborough Road.
Nobody repairs it,
For nobody wears it;
It is a living way,
As the Christians say.
Not many there be
Who enter therein,
Only the guests of the
Irishman Quin.
What is it, what is it,
But a direction out there,
And the bare possibility
Of going somewhere?
Great guideboards of stone,
But travellers none;
Cenotaphs of the towns
Named on their crowns.
It is worth going to see
Where you might be.
What king
Did the thing,
I am still wondering;
Set up how or when,
By what selectmen,
1 Hest
SAG g
BY
=

 
Eo
Gourgas or Lee,
Clark or Darby?
They’re a great endeavor
To be something forever;
Blank tablets of stone,
Where a traveller might groan,
And in one sentence
Grave all that is known;
Which another might read,
In his extreme need.
I know one or two
Lines that would do,
Literature that might stand
All over the land,
Which a man could remember
Till next December,
And read again in the spring,
After the thawing.

If with fancy unfurled
You leave your abode,
You may go round the world
By the Old Marlborough Road.
Excursions, 215.
[10 ]
CROSSBILLS AT THE LEANING HEMLOCKS

Aprin 13, 1860. As I was paddling [up the Assa-
bet] past the uppermost hemlocks I saw two peculiar
and plump birds near me on the bank there which
reminded me of the cow blackbird and of the oriole
at first. I saw at once that they were new to me, and
guessed that they were crossbills,! which was the case,
—male and female. The former was dusky-greenish
(through a glass), orange, and red, the orange, etc.,
on head, breast, and rump, the vent white; dark,
large bill; the female more of a dusky slate-color,
and yellow instead of orange and red. They were
very busily eating the seeds of the hemlock, whose
cones were strewn on the ground, and they were
very fearless, allowing me to approach quite near. . . .
They were very parrot-like both in color (especially
the male, greenish and orange, etc.) and in their man-
ner of feeding, — holding the hemlock cones in one
claw and rapidly extracting the seeds with their bills,
thus trying one cone after another very fast. But
they kept their bills a-going so that, near as they
were, I did not distinguish the cross. I should have
looked at them in profile. At last the two hopped
within six feet of me, and one within four feet, and

1 The crossbills photographed were found near the “Leaning Hem-
locks,” — the identical locality noted by Thoreau, — only they were of
the white-winged species, while the birds Thoreau saw were evidently
red crossbills. The occurrence of either species in Concord is still a rare
event. H. W. G.
 

 
C1]

they were coming still nearer, as if partly from curi-
osity, though nibbling the cones all the while, when
my chain fell down and rattled loudly, — for the
wind shook the boat, — and they flew off a rod. In
Bechstein I read that “it frequents fir and pine
woods, but only when there are abundance of the
cones.” It may be that the abundance of white pine
cones last fall had to do with their coming here. The
hemlock cones were very abundant too, methinks.

Journal, x11, 245, 246.
[12]

COWSLIPS

Aprit 6, 1853. To Second Division Brook. One
cowslip, though it shows the yellow, is not fairly out,
but will be by to-morrow. How they improve their
time! Not a moment of sunshine lost. One thing I
may depend on: there has been no idling with the
flowers. They advance as steadily as a clock. Nature
loses not a moment, takes no vacation. These plants,
now protected by the water, just peeping forth. I
should not be surprised to find that they drew in
their heads in a frosty night.

Journal, v, 98.

Aprix 11, 1856. I might have said on the 8th: Be-
hold that little hemisphere of green in the black and
sluggish brook, amid the open alders, sheltered under
a russet tussock. It is the cowslips’ forward green.
Look narrowly, explore the warmest nooks; here are
buds larger yet, showing more yellow, and yonder
see two full-blown yellow disks, close to the water’s
edge. Methinks they dip into it when the frosty
nights come.

Journal, vi, 276.
 
[13 ]

APRIL 29, 1852. The season is most forward at the
Second Division Brook, where the cowslip is in blos-
som, — and nothing yet planted at home, — these
bright-yellow suns of the meadow, in rich clusters,
their flowers contrasting with the green leaves, from
amidst the all-producing, dark-bottomed water. A
flower-fire bursting up, as if through crevices in the
meadow. They are very rich, seen in the meadow
where they grow, and the most conspicuous flower
at present, but held in the hand they are rather
coarse. But their yellow and green are really rich,
and in the meadow they are the most delicate objects.
Their bright yellow is something incredible when
first beheld.

Journal, u1, 479, 480.
[ 147
HOUSTONIAS

ApRIL 24, 1853. Houstonias. How affecting that,
annually at this season, as surely as the sun takes a
higher course in the heavens, this pure and simple
little flower peeps out and spots the great globe with
white in our America, its four little white or bluish
petals on a slender stalk making a delicate flower
about a third of an inch in diameter! What a sig-
nificant, though faint, utterance of spring through
the veins of earth!

Journal, v, 112.

May 5, 1860. There are some dense beds of hous-
tonia in the yard of the old Conantum house. Some
parts of them show of a distinctly bluer shade two
rods off. They are most interesting now, before many
other flowers are out, the grass high, and they have
lost their freshness. I sit down by one dense bed of
them to examine it. It is about three feet long and
two or more wide. The flowers not only crowd one
another, but are in several tiers, one above another,
and completely hide the ground, — a mass of white.
Counting those in a small place, I find that there are
about three thousand flowers in a square foot. They
are all turned a little toward the sun, and emit a re-
freshing odor. Here is a lumbering humblebee, prob-
ing these tiny flowers. It is a rather ludicrous sight.
Of course they will not support him, except a little
 
[15 J
where they are densest; so he bends them down
awkwardly (hauling them in with his arms, as it
were), one after another, thrusting his beak into the
tube of each. It takes him but a moment to dispatch
one. It is a singular sight, a humblebee clambering
over a bed of these delicate flowers.
Journal, x1, 278.
[ 16 J
MAYFLOWERS (EPIGHA REPENS)

Apri 4, 1859. The epigzea looks as if it would
open in two or three days at least, — showing much
color. The flower-buds are protected by the with-
ered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them,
so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the
first flower. These plants blossom by main strength,
as it were, or the virtue that is in them, — not grow-
ing by water, as most early flowers, — in dry copses.

Journal, x11, 114.

AprRIL 29, 1852. The mayflower on the point of
blossoming. I think I may say that it will blossom
to-morrow. The blossoms of this plant are remark-
ably concealed beneath the leaves, perhaps for pro-
tection. It is singularly unpretending, not seeking
to exhibit or display its simple beauty. It is the most
delicate flower, both to eye and to scent, as yet. Its
weather-worn leaves do not adorn it. If it had fresh
spring leaves it would be more famous and sought

after.
Journal, 111, 480.

WOOD ANEMONES

APRIL 28, 1856. Many Anemone nemorosa in full
bloom at the further end of Yellow Thistle Meadow,
in that warm nook by the brook, some probably a
day or two there. I think that they are thus early
 
Civ
on account of Miles’s dam having broken away and
washed off all the snow for some distance there, in
the latter part of the winter, long before it melted
elsewhere. It is a warm corner under the south side
of a wooded hill, where they are not often, if ever
before, flooded.

Journal, vu, 315.

May 2, 1855. The anemone is well named, for see
now the nemorosa, amid the fallen brush and leaves,
trembling in the wind, so fragile.

Journal, vu, 352.

May 9, 1852. To Trillium Woods. These low
woods are full of the Anemone nemorosa, half opened
at this hour and gracefully drooping, — sepals with
a purple tinge on the under side, now exposed. They
are in beds and look like hail on the ground; their
now globular flowers spot the ground white.

Journal, tv, 40.
[18 J

RABBITS AND PARTRIDGES

Wzrat is a country without rabbits and partridges?
They are among the most simple and indigenous
animal products; ancient and venerable families
known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very
hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves
and to the ground, — and to one another; it is either
winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen
a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts
away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as
rustling leaves. The partridge and the rabbit are
still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, what-
ever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the
sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them
concealment, and they become more numerous than
ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does
not support a hare. Our woods teem with them both,
and around every swamp may be seen the partridge
or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-

hair snares, which some cow-boy tends.
Walden, 310.
 
Lag J

A PARTRIDGE NEST

May 7, 1855. A partridge flew up from within
three or four feet of me with a loud whir, and be-
trayed one cream-colored egg in a little hollow amid
the leaves.

May 12. I find the partridge-nest of the 7th par-
tially covered with dry oak leaves, and two more
eggs only, three in all, cold. Probably the bird is
killed.

May 26. The partridge which on the 12th had
left three cold eggs covered up with oak leaves is
now sitting on eight. She apparently deserted her
nest for a time and covered it.!

Journal, vu, 363, 371, 390.

1 These entries illustrate a habit of Thoreau’s — examples of which
abound in the journal — of following up an interesting subject so as to
make a complete record. Bradford Torrey remarks that Thoreau’s pro-
nunciation of the family name, which was very much like the adjective
“‘thorough,’’ suggests a conspicuous trait in his character. H. W. G.
[ 20 ]
BIRD-FOOT VIOLETS (VIOLA PEDATA)

May 10, 1858. How much expression there is in
the Viola pedata! I do not know on the whole but it
is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows
in such large masses. I have thought there was a
certain shallowness in its expression, yet it spreads
so perfectly open with its face turned upward that

you get its whole expression.
Journal, x, 411.

May 17, 1853. The V. pedata presents the greatest
array of blue of any flower as yet. The flowers are
so raised above their leaves, and so close together,
that they make a more indelible impression of blue
on the eye; it is almost dazzling. I blink as I look at
them, they seem to reflect the blue rays so forcibly,

with a slight tinge of lilac.
Journal, v, 165.

FRINGED POLYGALA

May 17, 1853. The fringed polygala surprises us
in meadows or in low woods as a rarer, richer, and
more delicate color, with a singularly tender or deli-
cate-looking leaf. As you approach midsummer, the
color of flowers is more intense and fiery. The red-
dest flower is the flower especially. Our blood is not
white, nor is it yellow, nor even blue.

Journal; v, 164.
 
[. ea

-

May 27, 1852. The fringed polygala near the Cor-
ner Spring is a delicate flower, with very fresh tender
green leaves and red-purple blossoms; beautiful from
the contrast of its clear red-purple flowers with its
clear green leaves.

Journal, iv, 74.
[22 J

MAY FOLIAGE

May 17, 1852. Now the sun has come out after
the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and
tender promise and fragrance is the new world! The
woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable
season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the
beauty of flowers.... Do I smell the young birch
leaves at a distance? Most trees are beautiful when
leafing out, but especially the birch. After a storm
at this season, the sun comes out and lights up the
tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light
and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing,
and the earth is a fairyland. The birch leaves are so
small that you see the landscape through the tree,
and they are like silvery and green spangles in the
sun, fluttering about the tree.

Journal, tv, 61, 62.
 

 

 

 
[ 23 ]

May 22, 1854. Now the springing foliage is like a
sunlight on the woods. I was first attracted and sur-
prised when I looked round and off to Conantum,
at the smooth, lawn-like green fields and pasturing
cows, bucolical, reminding me of new butter. The
air so clear — as not in summer — makes all things
shine, as if all surfaces had been washed by the
rains of spring and were not yet soiled or begrimed
or dulled. You see even to the mountains clearly.
The grass so short and fresh, the tender yellowish-
green and silvery foliage of the deciduous trees
lighting up the landscape, the birds now most musi-
cal, the sorrel beginning to redden the fields with
ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a
paradise. How many times I have been surprised
thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the
fairness of the earth!

Journal, v1, 289.
[ 24 J
BARN SWALLOW

May 20, 1852. A barn swallow accompanied me
across the Depot Field, methinks attracted by the
insects which I started, though I saw them not,
wheeling and tacking incessantly on all sides and
repeatedly dashing within a rod of me. It is an agree-
able sight to watch one. Nothing lives in the air but
is in rapid motion.

Journal, tv, 66.

VESPER SPARROW (BAY-WING)

May 12, 1857. While dropping beans in the gar-
den at Texas just after sundown, I hear from across
the fields the note of the bay-wing, and it instantly
translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs
all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me
of so many country afternoons and evenings when
this bird’s strain was heard far over the fields. The
spirit of its earth-song, of its serene and true phi-
losophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world
as through a glass, as it lies eternally. Some of its
aboriginal contentment, even of its domestic feli-
city, possessed me. What he suggests is permanently
true. As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years
ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard
his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has
endured. ... I ordinarily plod along a sort of white-
 
[ 25 ]
washed prison entry, subject to some indifferent or
even grovelling mood. I do not distinctly realize
my destiny. I have turned down my light to the
merest glimmer and am doing some task which I
have set myself. I take incredibly narrow views, live
on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute
truth. Mushroom institutions hedge me in. But
suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of
eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the
sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my

senses, makes me a competent witness.
Journal, 1x, 363-65.
[ 26 ]
APPLE BLOSSOMS

May 21, 1852. The earlier apple trees are in bloom,
and resound with the hum of bees of all sizes and
other insects. To sit under the first apple tree in
blossom is to take another step into summer. The
apple blossoms are so abundant and full, white
tinged with red; a rich-scented Pomona fragrance,
telling of heaps of apples in the autumn, perfectly
innocent, wholesome, and delicious.

Journal, tv, 67.

The flowers of .the apple are perhaps the most
beautiful of any tree’s, so copious and so delicious
to both sight and scent. The walker is frequently
tempted to turn and linger near some more than
usually handsome one, whose blossoms are two-
thirds expanded. How superior it is in these respects
to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor

fragrant!
Excursions, 294.

BEAUTY OF WILD APPLES!

Appues, these I mean, unspeakably fair, — apples
not of Discord, but of Concord! Yet not so rare but

1 Thoreau’s enthusiastic essay on “Wild Apples”’ is still admirably
up-to-date, so far as Concord is concerned. Both when in flower and in
fruit, the wild apple trees of Concord form a strong attraction for the
walker. H. W. G. ;
 
[27 J
that the homeliest may have a share. Painted by
the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or
red, or crimson, as if their spheres had regularly
revolved, and enjoyed the sun on all sides alike, —
some with the faintest pink blush imaginable, —
some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or
with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regu-
larly from the stem-dimple to the blossom end, like
meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground, — some
touched with a greenish rust, like a fine lichen, here
and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or less
confluent and fiery when wet, — and others gnarly,
and freckled or peppered all over on the stem side
with fine crimson spots on a white ground, as if acci-
dentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints
the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red
inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food,
too beautiful to eat,— apple of the Hesperides,
apple of the evening sky!
Excursions, 314, 315.
[ 28 ]
LORING’S POND

May 17, 1852. To Loring’s Pond. The different
color of the water at different times would be worth
observing. To-day it is full of light and life, the breeze
presenting many surfaces to the sun. There is a
sparkling shimmer on it. It is a deep, dark blue, as
the sky is clear. The air everywhere is, as it were,
full of the rippling of waves. This pond is the more
interesting for the islands in it. The water is seen
running behind them, and it is pleasant to know that
it penetrates quite behind and isolates the land you
see, or to see it apparently flowing out from behind
an island with shining ripples.

Journal, tv, 60.

A LILAC BUSH — THE LAST REMNANT
OF A HOME?!

STILL grows the vivacious lilac a generation after
the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding
its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked
by the musing traveller; planted and tended once
by children’s hands, in front-yard plots, — now
standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving

1 Thoreau’s reference in this description is to the lilac bushes (some of
which still exist) marking the former residences on Brister’s Hill of some
colored families. The bush in the photograph is more interesting as be-

ing the sole relic of the old homestead on Conantum to which Thoreau
refers several times. (See Journal, vol. x, p. 364.) H. W. G.
 

 

 

 

 

 
[ 29 ]
place to new-rising forests; — the last of that stirp,
sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky
children think that the puny slip with its two eyes
only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow
of the house and daily watered, would root itself so,
and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that
shaded it, and grown man’s garden and orchard,
and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a
half-century after they had grown up and died, —
blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that
first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful,
lilac colors.
Walden, 290.
[30 ]
RHODORA

May 17, 1853. The rhodora is peculiar for being,
like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a
leafless stem.

May 23. I see the light purple of the rhodora en-
livening the edges of swamps — another color the
sun wears. It is a beautiful shrub seen afar, and
makes a great show from the abundance of its bloom
unconcealed by leaves, rising above the andromeda.
Is it not the most showy high-colored flower or shrub?
Flowers are the different colors of the sunlight.

Journal, v, 163, 185.

May 17, 1854. The splendid rhodora now sets
the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color. It
is one of the first flowers to catch the eye at a dis-
tance in masses, —so naked, unconcealed by its
own leaves.

Journal, v1, 277.

WILD PINK

May 30, 1854. The pink is certainly one of the
finest of our flowers and deserves the place it holds
in my memory. It is now in its prime on the south
side of the Heywood Peak, where it grows luxuriantly
in dense rounded tufts or hemispheres, raying out
on every side and presenting an even and regular sur-
 
i

face of expanded flowers. It is associated in my mind
with the first heats of summer, or those which an-
nounce its near approach.

Journal, vi, 317, 318.

JUNE 1, 1853. The tufts of pinks on the side of
the peak by the pond grow raying out somewhat
from a centre, somewhat like a cyme, on the warm
dry side-hill, — some a lighter, some a richer and
darker, shade of pink. With what a variety of colors
we are entertained! Yet most colors are rare or in
small doses, presented us as a condiment or spice.
Much of green, blue, black, and white, but of yellow
and the different shades of red far less. The eye feasts
on the colors of flowers as on titbits; they are its
spices.

Journal, v, 212.
[ 32 ]
FERNS IN THE WOODS

May 26, 1853. Now is the time to walk in low,
damp maple copses and see the tender, luxuriant
foliage that has pushed up, mushroom-like, before
the sun has come to harden it — the ferns of various
species and in various stages, some now in their most
perfect and beautiful condition, completely unfolded,
tender and delicate, but perfect in all their details,
far more than any lace-work — the most elaborate
leaf we have. So flat, just from the laundry, as if
pressed by some invisible flat-iron in the air. Un-
folding with such mathematical precision in the free
air, — green, starched and pressed, —might they not
be transferred, patterns for Mechlin and Brussels?

Journal, v, 190.

FLOWERING DOGWOOD (CORNUS FLORIDA)

May 27, 1853. The Cornus florida now fairly out,
and the involucres are now not greenish-white but
white tipped with reddish — like a small flock of
white birds passing, — three and a half inches in
diameter, the larger ones, as I find by measuring.
It is something quite novel in the tree line.

Journal, v, 192.

May 24, 1858. To New York by railroad. All
through Connecticut and New York the white invo-
 
Cae

lucres of the cornel (C. florida), recently expanded,
some of them reddish or rosaceous, are now con-
spicuous. It is not quite expanded in Concord. It
is the most showy indigenous tree now open.

Journal, x, 442.
II. SUMMER
E 36 |
PINCUSHION GALLS

JUNE 1, 1853. The pincushion galls on young
white oaks are now among the most beautiful objects
in the woods, coarse woolly white to appearance,
spotted with bright red or crimson on the exposed
side. It is remarkable that a mere gall, which at
first we are inclined to regard as something abnormal,
should be made so beautiful, as if it were the flower
of the tree; that a disease, an excrescence, should
prove, perchance, the greatest beauty, —as the
tear of the pearl.

Journal, v, 210.

A NIGHTHAWK’S NEST

JUNE 1, 1853. Walking up this side-hill, I dis-
turbed a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which
went, half fluttering, half hopping, the mottled
creature, down the hill as far as I could see. Without
moving, I looked about and saw its two eggs on the
bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, without
any cavity or nest whatever, very obvious when once
you had detected them, but not easily detected from
their color, — a coarse gray formed of white spotted
with a bluish or slaty brown or umber, a stone —
granite — color, like the places it selects. I advanced
and put my hand on them, and while I stooped, seeing
a shadow on the ground, looked up and saw the bird,
 

 

 
Lar

which had fluttered down the hill so blind and helpless,
circling low and swiftly past over my head, showing
the white spot on each wing in true nighthawk fashion.
When I had gone a dozen rods, it appeared again
higher in the air, with its peculiar flitting, limping
kind of flight, all the while noiseless, and, suddenly
descending, it dashed at me within ten feet of my
head, like an imp of darkness, then swept away high
over the pond, dashing now to this side now to that,
on different tacks, as if, in pursuit of its prey, it
had already forgotten its eggs on the earth. I can
see how it might easily come to be regarded with
superstitious awe.
Journal, v, 214, 215.
[ 38 4
RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS AND NEST

June 1, 1857. A red-wing’s nest, four eggs, low
in a tuft of sedge in an open meadow. What Cham-
pollion can translate the hieroglyphics on these
eggs? It is always writing of the same character,
though much diversified. While the bird picks up
the material and lays the egg, who determines the
style of the marking? When you approach, away
dashes the dark mother, betraying her nest, and then
chatters her anxiety from a neighboring bush, where
she is soon joined by the red-shouldered male, who
comes scolding over your head, chattering and utter-
ing a sharp phe-phee-e.

Journal, 1x, 397.

JUNE 6, 1856. How well suited the lining of a
bird’s nest, not only for the comfort of the young,
but to keep the eggs from breaking! Fine elastic
grass stems or root-fibres, pine-needles, or hair, or
the like. These tender and brittle things which you
can hardly carry in cotton lie there without harm.

Journal, vu, 368.

JuLy 30, 1852. What a gem is a bird’s egg, espe-
cially a blue or a green one, when you see one, broken
or whole, in the woods! I noticed a small blue egg
this afternoon washed up by Flint’s Pond and half
buried by white sand, and as it lay there, alternately
 

 

 

 

 

 
cao]

wet and dry, no color could be fairer, no gem could
have a more advantageous or favorable setting.
Probably it was shaken out of some nest which over-
hung the water. I frequently meet with broken egg-
shells where a crow, perchance, or some thief has
been marauding. And is not that shell something
very precious that houses that winged life?
Journal, 1v, 268, 269.
[ 40 ]

CLINTONIA

JUNE 2, 1853. Clintonia borealis, a day or two.
This is perhaps the most interesting and neatest of
what I may call the liliaceous plants we have. Its
beauty at present consists chiefly in its commonly
three very handsome, rich, clear dark-green leaves.
They are perfect in form and color, broadly oblan-
ceolate with a deep channel down the middle, un-
injured by insects, arching over from a centre at the
ground, sometimes very symmetrically disposed in a
triangular fashion; and from their midst rises the
scape a foot high, with one or more umbels of “‘ green
bell-shaped flowers,” yellowish-green, nodding or
bent downward, but without fragrance. In fact,
the flower is all green, both leaves and corolla. The
leaves alone —and many have no scape — would
detain the walker. Its berries are its flower. A
single plant is a great ornament in a vase, from
the beauty of its form and the rich, unspotted green
of its leaves.

Journal, v, 218, 219.
 

 

 

—
eareaeae

 

 

 
C41 ]

JUNE 13, 1852. The Clintonia borealis (Gray) is a
handsome and perfect flower, though not high-col-
ored. I prefer it to some more famous. But Gray
should not name it from the Governor of New
York. What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massa-
chusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man
of flowers. Rhode Island botanists may as well name
the flowers after their governors as New York. Name
your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please,
but his name is not associated with flowers.!

Journal, iv, 95.

1 The Clintonia was so named by Rafinesque, in 1832, not by Dr.

Gray, in honor of Governor De Witt Clinton, who was a naturalist of

some note, although chiefly famous in connection with the building of the
Erie Canal. H. W. G.
[ 42 ]

EARLY MORNING FOG FROM
NAWSHAWTUCT HILL

JuNE 2, 1853. 4 a.M. To Nawshawtuct. I go to
the river in a fog through which I cannot see more
than a dozen rods, — three or four times as deep as
the houses.... Now I have reached the hilltop
above the fog at a quarter to five, about sunrise, and
all around me is a sea of fog, level and white, reaching
nearly to the top of this hill, only the tops of a few
high hills appearing as distant islands in the main.
It is just like the clouds beneath you as seen from a
mountain. It is a perfect level in some directions,
cutting the hills near their summits with a geometri-
cal line, but puffed up here and there, and more and
more toward the east, by the influence of the sun. It
resembles nothing so much as the ocean. You can
get here the impression which the ocean makes,
without ever going to the shore. Men — poor sim-
pletons as they are — will go toa panorama by fami-
lies, to see a Pilgrim’s Progress, perchance, who never
yet made progress so far as to the top of such a hill
as this at the dawn of a foggy morning. All the fog
they know is in their brains. The seashore exhibits
nothing more grand or on a larger scale. How grand
where it rolls off northeastward over Ball’s Hill like
a glorious ocean after a storm, just lit by the rising
sun! It is as boundless as the view from the high-
lands of Cape Cod. They are exaggerated billows,
 

 

 

 
[ 43 J

the ocean on a larger scale, the sea after some tre-
mendous and unheard-of storm, for the actual sea
never appears so tossed up and universally white
with foam and spray as this now far in the north-
eastern horizon, where mountain billows are break-
ing on some hidden reef or bank. It is tossed up
toward the sun and by it into the most boisterous of
seas, which no craft, no ocean steamer, is vast enough
to sail on.
Journal, v, 216, 217.
[ 44 J
BUTTERCUPS BY THE ROADSIDE

JUNE 4, 1860. The clear brightness of June was
well represented yesterday by the buttercups along
the roadside. Their yellow so glossy and varnished
within, but not without. Surely there is no reason
why the new butter should not be yellow now.

Journal, x11, 328.

LUPINES !

JUNE 5, 1852. The lupine is now in its glory. It is
the more important because it occurs in such ex-
tensive patches, even an acre or more together, and
of such a pleasing variety of colors, — purple, pink,
or lilac, and white, — especially with the sun on it,
when the transparency of the flower makes its color
changeable. It paints a whole hillside with its blue,
making such a field (if not meadow) as Proserpine
might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be
covered with dewdrops. I am quite excited by this
prospect of blue flowers in clumps with narrow inter-
vals. Such a profusion of the heavenly, the elysian,
color, as if these were the Elysian Fields. They say
the seeds look like babies’ faces, and hence the flower
is so named. No other flowers exhibit so much blue.

1 For various reasons (chiefly increased pasturage) the lupines in Con-
cord have largely disappeared. Repeated visits to the localities noted
by Thoreau have failed to reveal more than an occasional straggling
plant. H. W.G.
 
[ 45 J
That is the value of the lupine. The earth is blued
with them. Yet a third of a mile distant I do not
detect their color on the hillside. Perchance because
it is the color of the air. It is not distinct enough.
You passed along here, perchance, a fortnight ago,
and the hillside was comparatively barren, but now
you come and these glorious redeemers appear to
have flashed out here all at once. Who planted the
seeds of lupines in the barren soil? Who watereth
the lupines in the fields?
Journal, tv, 81, 82.
[46 J
LADY’S-SLIPPERS

JUNE 5, 1856. Everywhere now in dry pitch pine
woods stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine
leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with
their two broad curving green leaves, — some even
in swamps, — upholding their rich, striped, red,
drooping sacks.

Journal, vit, 365.

WILD CALLA LILY (CALLA PALUSTRIS)

JuNE 7, 1857. To river and Ponkawtasset with
M. Pratt.

Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime, — some
was withering, so it may have been out ten days, —
from the bog near Bateman’s Pond; also Orzalis
vtolacea, which he says began about last Sunday.

Journal, 1x, 409.

JUNE 9, 1857. To Violet Sorrel and Calla Swamp.!
The calla is generally past prime and going to seed.
I had said to Pratt, “It will be worth the while
to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I
have observed that where one rare plant grows there

1 This illustrates Thoreau’s habit of giving names of his own choosing
to certain localities in Concord, the particular names oftentimes being
suggested by the discovery of some rare plant, as in this case. Minot
Pratt was a devoted lover of plants and introduced a number of wild
species not previously found in Concord. He was one of the few residents
of Concord who appreciated Thoreau’s outdoor studies. H. W. G.
 
[47 ]

will commonly be others.” Carrying out this design,
this afternoon, I had not taken three steps into the
swamp barelegged before I found the Naumbergia
thyrsiflora [tufted loosestrife] in sphagnum and water,
which I had not seen growing before.

Journal, 1x, 411.

JuLy 2, 1857. To Gowing’s Swamp. Calla palus-
tris (with its convolute point like the cultivated) at
the south end of Gowing’s Swamp. Having found
this in one place, I now find it in another. Many an
object is not seen, though it falls within the range of
our visual ray, because it does not come within the
range of our intellectual eye, 2.¢., we are not looking
for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world
we look for.

Journal, 1x, 466.
[ 48 ]
GREAT FRINGED ORCHIS

JUNE 8, 1854. Find the great fringed orchis out
apparently two or three days. Two are almost fully
out, two or three only budded. A large spike of pe-
culiarly delicate pale-purple flowers growing in the
luxuriant and shady swamp amid hellebores, ferns,
golden senecios, ete. It is remarkable that this, one
of the fairest of all our flowers, should also be one of
the rarest, — for the most part not seen at all. I think
that no other but myself in Concord annually finds
it. That so queenly a flower should annually bloom
so rarely and in such withdrawn and secret places
.as to be rarely seen by man! The village belle never
sees this more delicate belle of the swamp. How little
relation between our life and its! Most of us never
see it or hear of it. The seasons go by to us as if it
were not. A beauty reared in the shade of a convent,
who has never strayed beyond the convent bell.

Journal, v1, 337, 338.

JUNE 15, 1852. Here also, at Well Meadow Head,
I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beauti-
ful, though a pale lilac purple, — a large spike of
purple flowers. Why does it grow there only, far in
a swamp, remote from public view? It is somewhat
fragrant, reminding me of the lady’s-slipper. Is it
not significant that some rare and delicate and beau-
tiful flowers should be found only in unfrequented
 
[ 49 J
wild swamps? There is the mould in which the orchis
grows. Yet I am not sure but this is a fault in the
flower. It is not quite perfect in all its parts. A beau-
tiful flower must be simple, not spiked. It must have
a fair stem and leaves. This stem is rather naked,
and the leaves are for shade and moisture. It is fair-
est seen rising from amid brakes and hellebore, its
lower part or rather naked stem concealed. Where
the most beautiful wild-flowers grow, there man’s
spirit is fed, and poets grow. It cannot be high-col-
ored, growing in the shade. Nature has taken no
pains to exhibit it, and few that bloom are ever seen
by mortal eyes. The most striking and handsome
large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have

seen.
Journal, rv, 103, 104.
[ 5° ]
WHITE POND

JUNE 14, 1853. To White Pond. How beautifully
the northeast shore curves! The pines and other
trees so perfect on their water side. There is no raw-
ness nor imperfection to the edge of the wood in this
case, as where an axe has cleared, or a cultivated
field abuts on it; but the eye rises by natural grada-
tions from the low shrubs, the alders, of the shore
to the higher trees. It is a natural selvage. It is com-
paratively unaffected by man. The water laves the
shore as it did a thousand years ago. Such curves in
a wood bordering on a field do not affect us as when
it is a winding shore of a lake. This is a firmer edge.
It will not be so easily torn.

Journal, v, 251.

MOUNTAIN LAUREL

JUNE 23, 1852. The mountain laurel, with its milk-
white flower, in cool and shady woods, reminds one
of the vigor of nature. It is perhaps a first-rate flower,
considering its size and evergreenness. Its flower-
buds, curiously folded in a ten-angled pyramidal
form, are remarkable. A profusion of flowers, with an
innocent fragrance. It reminds me of shady moun-
tainsides where it forms the underwood.

Journal, tv, 130.
 

 

 
[ 51 ]

JUNE 17, 1853. The mountain laurel by Walden
in its prime. It is a splendid flower, and more red
than that in Mason’s pasture.! Its dry, dead-look-
ing, brittle stems, as it were leaning over other
bushes or each other, bearing at the ends great dense
corymbs five inches in diameter of rose or pink tinged
flowers, without an interstice between them, over-
lapping each other, each often more than an inch in
diameter. A single one of which would be esteemed
very beautiful. It is a highlander wandered down
into the plain.

Journal, v, 269, 270.

1 A single bush of mountain laurel is still to be found in Mason’s pas-

ture, but with the exception of where it has been planted for the adorn-

ment of private estates the mountain laurel in Concord (as Thoreau says
in another place) is “as rare as poetry.”” H. W.G.
[ 52 ]
TREES REFLECTED IN THE RIVER

JUNE 15, 1840. I stood by the river to-day consid-
ering the forms of the elms reflected in the water.
For every oak and birch, too, growing on the hill-
top, as well as for elms and willows, there is a grace-
ful ethereal tree making down from the roots, as it
were the original idea of the tree, and sometimes
Nature in high tides brings her mirror to its foot
and makes it visible. Anxious Nature sometimes re-
flects from pools and puddles the objects which our
grovelling senses may fail to see relieved against the
sky with the pure ether for background.

’ It would be well if we saw ourselves as in perspec-
tive always, impressed with distinct outline on the
sky, side by side with the shrubs on the river’s brim.
So let our life stand to heaven as some fair, sunlit
tree against the western horizon, and by sunrise be
planted on some eastern hill to glisten in the first

rays of the dawn.
Journal, 1, 139, 140.

Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there
is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy
running aground. We notice that it required a sep-
arate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted
vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to
see the river bottom merely; and so there are mani-
fold visions in the direction of every object, and even
 

 
[, 33 J

the most opaque reflect the heavens from their sur-
face. Some men have their eyes naturally intended
to the one and some to the other object. Two men
in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, floating
buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees, like a
feather in mid-air, or a leaf which is wafted gently
from its twig to the water without turning over,
seemed still in their element, and to have delicately
availed themselves of the natural laws. Their float-
ing there was a beautiful and successful experiment
in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in
our eyes the art of navigation; for as birds fly and
fishes swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us how
much fairer and nobler all the actions of man might
be, and that our life in its whole economy might be
as beautiful as the fairést works of art or nature.
Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 47, 48.
[ 54 ]

WILD ROSES

JUNE 15, 1853. Here are many wild roses north-
east of Trillium Woods. We are liable to underrate
this flower on account of its commonness. Is it not
the queen of our flowers? How ample and high-
colored its petals, glancing half concealed from its
own green bowers! There is a certain noble and deli-
cate civility about it, — not wildness. It is prop-
erly the type of the Rosacee, or flowers among others
of most wholesome fruits. It is at home in the garden,
as readily cultivated as apples. It is the pride of
June. In summing up its attractions I should men-
tion its rich color, size, and form, the rare beauty
-of its bud, its fine fragrance, and the beauty of the
entire shrub, not to mention the almost innumer-
able varieties it runs into. I bring home the buds
ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water, and
the next morning they open and fill my chamber with
fragrance. This, found in the wilderness, must have
reminded the Pilgrim of home.

Journal, v, 256.
 

 

 

 

 
[ 55 ]

JUNE 25, 1852. Methinks roses oftenest display
their high colors, colors which invariably attract all
eyes and betray them, against a dark ground, as the
dark green or the shady recesses of the bushes and
copses, where they show to best advantage. Their
enemies do not spare the open flower for an hour.
Hence, if for no other reason, their buds are most
beautiful. Their promise of perfect and dazzling
beauty, when their buds are just beginning to ex-
pand, — beauty which they can hardly contain, —
as in most youths, commonly surpasses the fulfill-
ment of their expanded flowers. The color shows
fairest and brightest in the bud.

Journal, iv, 142.
[, 56

WATER-LILIES

JUNE 19, 1853. Exquisitely beautiful, and_ unlike
anything else that we have, is the first white lily
just expanded in some shallow lagoon where the
water is leaving it, — perfectly fresh and pure, be-
fore the insects have discovered it. How admirable
its purity! how innocently sweet its fragrance! How
significant that the rich, black mud of our dead
stream produces the water-lily, — out of that fertile
slime springs this spotless purity!

Journal, v, 283.

JUNE 16, 1854. Again I scent the white water-
lily, and a season I had waited for is arrived. How
indispensable all these experiences to make up the
summer! It is the emblem of purity, and its scent
suggests it. Growing in stagnant and muddy water,
it bursts up so pure and fair to the eye and so sweet
to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweet-
ness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime
and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the first
one that has opened for a mile at least. What con-
firmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of the
water-lily! I shall not so soon despair of the world
 
[57]

for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice
and want of principle of the North. It suggests that
the time may come when men’s deeds will smell as
sweet. Such, then, is the odor our planet emits. Who
can doubt, then, that Nature is young and sound?
If Nature can compound this fragrance still annu-
ally, I shall believe her still full of vigor, and that
there is virtue in man, too, who perceives and loves
it. It is as if all the pure and sweet and virtuous was
extracted from the slime and decay of earth and
presented thus in a flower. The resurrection of vir-
tue!... The foul slime stands for the sloth and
vice of man; the fragrant flower that springs from
it, for the purity and courage which springs from its
midst. It is these sights and sounds and fragrances
put together that convince us of our immortality.
Journal, vi, 352, 353.
1 An instance of Thoreau’s intense feeling on the slavery question,
which found extended expression in his famous addresses on John Brown.

(See the volume Cape Cod and Miscellanies, pp. 409 and 441; also nu-
merous entries in the Journal, vols. xm and xu.) H. W. G.
[ 58 J
ORIENTATION OF YOUNG PINE SHOOTS

JuNE 23, 1852. There are interesting groves of
young soft white pines eighteen feet high, whose
vigorous yellowish-green shoots of this season, from
three to eighteen inches long, at the extremities of
all the branches, contrast remarkably with the dark
green of the old leaves. I observe that these shoots
are bent, and, what is more remarkable, all one way,
i.e., to the east, almost at a right angle the topmost
ones, and I am reminded of the observation in
Henry’s Adventures, that the Indians guided them-
selves in cloudy weather by this mark. All these
shoots, excepting those low down on the east side,
are bent toward the east. I am very much pleased
with this observation, confirming that of the Indians.
I was singularly impressed when I first observed
that all the young pines in this pasture obeyed this
law, without regard to the direction of the wind or
the shelter of other trees. To make myself more
sure of the direction, as it was not easy to determine
it exactly, standing on one side, where so many
shoots were bent in the air, I went behind the trees
on the west till the bent shoot appeared as a straight
line, and then, by observing my shadow and guess-
ing at the time of day, I decided that their direction
was due east. This gives me more satisfaction than
any observation which I have made for a long time.
This is true of the rapidly growing shoots. How long
 

 
[ 59 J
will this phenomenon avail to guide the traveller?
How soon do they become erect? A natural com-
pass. How few civilized men probably have ever
made this observation, so important to the savage!
How much may there have been known to his wood-
craft which has not been detected by science! At
first I remarked the shoots of a distinct yellowish
green, contrasting with the rest of the tree, then that
they were not upright but bent more or less, and next
that they were all inclined one way, as if bent by
the wind, and finally that they were all bent east,
without regard to the wind.
Journal, 1v, 136, 137.

1 In his journal entry for the next day, describing a trip to White
Pond, Thoreau frankly but sadly remarks: “I am disappointed to no-
tice to-day that most of the pine-tops incline to the west, as if the wind
had to do with it.”
[ 60 ]

A JUNE LANDSCAPE FROM FAIR
HAVEN HILL

JuNE 30, 1860. Generally speaking, the fields are.
not imbrowned yet, but the freshness of the year is
preserved. Standing on the side of Fair Haven Hill
the verdure generally appears at its height, the air
clear, and the water sparkling (after the rain of yes-
terday), and it is a world of glossy leaves and grassy
fields and meads.

Seen through this clear, sparkling, breezy air, the
fields, woods, and meadows are very brilliant and
fair. The leaves are now hard and glossy (the oldest),
yet still comparatively fresh, and I do not see a single
acre of grass that has been cut yet. The river mead-
ows on each side the stream, looking toward the
light, have an elysian beauty. A light-yellow plush
or velvet, as if some gamboge had been rubbed into
them. They are by far the most bright and sunny-
looking spots, such is the color of the sedges which
grow there, while the pastures and hillsides are dark-
green and the grain-fields glaucous-green.

Journal, x11, 380.

WHITE CLOVER

JUNE 29, 1851. There is a great deal of white
clover this year. In many fields where there has
been no clover seed sown for many years at least,
 

 

 
[ 61 ]
it is more abundant than the red, and the heads are
nearly as large. Also pastures which are close cropped,
and where I think there was little or no clover
last year, are spotted white with a humbler growth.
And everywhere, by roadsides, garden borders, etc.,
even where the sward is trodden hard, the small
white heads on short stems are sprinkled every-
where. As this is the season for the swarming of
bees, and this clover is very attractive to them, it is
probably the more difficult to secure them; at any
rate it is the more important to secure their services
now that they can make honey so fast. It is an in-
teresting inquiry why this year is so favorable to the

growth of clover.
Journal, 11, 271, 272.
[ 62 ]
TARBELL’S SPRING

Jury 5, 1852. How cheering it is to behold a full
spring bursting forth directly from the earth, like
this of Tarbell’s, from clean gravel, copiously, in a
thin sheet; for it descends at once, where you see
no opening, cool from the caverns of the earth, and
making a considerable stream. Such springs, in the
sale of lands, are not valued for as much as they are
worth. I lie almost flat, resting my hands on what
offers, to drink at this water where it bubbles, at the
very udders of Nature, for man is never weaned from
her breast while this life lasts. How many times in
a single walk does he stoop for a draught!

Journal, tv, 188.

JuLy 12, 1857. I drink at every cooler spring in
my walk these afternoons and love to eye the bot-
tom there, with its pebbly caddis-cases, or its white
worms, or perchance a luxurious frog cooling himself
next my nose. Sometimes the farmer, foreseeing hay-
ing, has been prudent enough to sink a tub in one,
which secures a clear deep space. .. . When a spring
has been allowed to fill up, to be muddied by cattle,
or, being exposed to the sun by cutting down the
trees and bushes, to dry up, it affects me sadly, like
an institution going to decay. Sometimes I see, on
one side the tub, — the tub overhung with various
wild plants and flowers, its edge almost completely
 

 

 
[ 63 ]
concealed even from the searching eye, — the white
sand freshly cast up where the spring is bubbling in.
Often I sit patiently by the spring I have cleaned
out and deepened with my hands, and see the foul
water rapidly dissipated like a curling vapor and
giving place to the cool and clear. Sometimes I can
look a yard or more into a crevice under a rock,
toward the sources of a spring in a hillside, and see
it come cool and copious with incessant murmuring
down to the light. There are few more refreshing
sights in hot weather.
Journal, 1x, 477, 478.
[ 64 ]
A WAVING RYE-FIELD

JuLy 8, 1851. Here are some rich rye-fields wav-
ing over all the land, their heads nodding in the eve-
ning breeze with an apparently alternating motion;
1.e., they do not all bend at once by ranks, but sepa-
rately, and hence this agreeable alternation. How rich
a sight this cereal fruit, now yellow for the cradle, —
flavus! It is animpenetrable phalanx. I walk for half
a mile beside these Macedonians, looking in vain for
an opening. There is no Arnold Winkelried to gather
these spear-heads upon his breast and make an open-
ing for me. This is food for man. The earth labors
not in vain; it is bearing its burden. The yellow, wav-
ing, rustling rye extends far up and over the hills on
either side, a kind of pinafore to nature, leaving only
a narrow and dark passage at the bottom of a deep
ravine. How rankly it has grown! How it hastes to
maturity! I discover that there is such a goddess
as Ceres. These long grain-fields which you must
respect, — must go round, — occupying the ground
like an army. The small trees and shrubs seen dimly
in its midst are overwhelmed by the grain as by an
inundation. They are seen only as indistinct forms of
bushes and green leaves mixed with the yellow stalks.
There are certain crops which give me the idea of
bounty, of the Alma Natura. They are the grains.
Potatoes do not so fill the lap of earth. This rye ex-
cludes everything else and takes possession of the soil.
Eee

The farmer says, “‘Next year I will raise a crop of
rye”’; and he proceeds to clear away the brush, and
either plows it, or, if it is too uneven or stony, burns
and harrows it only, and scatters the seed with faith.
And all winter the earth keeps his secret, — unless
it did leak out somewhat in the fall, — and in the
spring this early green on the hillsides betrays him.
When I see this luxuriant crop spreading far and
wide in spite of rock and bushes and unevenness of
ground, I cannot help thinking that it must have been
unexpected by the farmer himself, and regarded by
him as a lucky accident for which to thank fortune.
Journal, 11, 293, 294.
Eee)
YELLOW AND RED LILIES

JuLy 19, 1851. Heavily hangs the common yellow
lily (Lilium Canadense) in the meadows.
Journal, 11, 320.

JuLy 7, 1852. When the yellow lily flowers in the
meadows, and the red in dry lands and by wood-
paths, then, methinks, the flowering season has
reached its height. They surprise me as perhaps no
more can. Now I am prepared for anything.

Journal, tv, 201.

JuLy 9, 1852. The red lily, with its torrid color and
sun-freckled spots, dispensing, too, with the outer
garment of a calyx, its petals so open and wide apart
that you can see through it in every direction, tells
of hot weather. It is a handsome bell shape, so up-
right, and the flower prevails over every other ‘part.

It belongs not to spring.
Journal, tv, 206, 207.

JuLy 11, 1852. The yellow lily is not open-petalled
like the red, nor is its flower upright, but drooping.
On the whole I am most attracted by the red. They
both make freckles beautiful.

Journal, tv, 219.
 
[67 J

Having reloaded, we paddled down the Penob-
scot, which, as the Indian remarked, and even I de-
tected, remembering how it looked before, was un-
commonly full. We soon after saw a splendid yellow
lily (Lilium Canadense) by the shore, which I
plucked. It was six feet high, and had twelve flow-
ers, in two whorls, forming a pyramid, such as I have
seen in Concord. We afterward saw many more
thus tall along this stream, and also still more numer-
ous on the East Branch, and, on the latter, one which
I thought approached yet nearer to the Liliwm super-
bum. The Indian asked what we called it, and said.
that the “loots” (roots) were good for soup, that is,
to cook with meat, to thicken it, taking the place of
flour. They get them in the fall. I dug some, and
found a mass of bulbs pretty deep in the earth, two
inches in diameter, looking, and even tasting, some-
what like raw green corn on the ear.

The Maine Woods, 209.
[88°]
AN OLD UNFREQUENTED ROAD

Juty 21, 1851. Now I yearn for one of those
old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead
away from towns, which lead us away from temp-
tation, which conduct to the outside of earth, over
its uppermost crust; where you may forget in what
country you are travelling; where no farmer can
complain that you are treading down his grass, no
gentleman who has recently constructed a seat in the

country that you are trespassing; . . . along which
you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where
travellers are not too often to be met; . . . where the

walls and fences are not cared for; where your head
is more in heaven than your feet are on earth; .. .
where it makes no odds which way you face, whether
you are going or coming, whether it is morning or
evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth is cheap
enough by being public; where you can walk and
think with least obstruction, there being nothing to
measure progress by; where you can pace when
your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness;
where you are not in false relations with men, are
not dining nor conversing with them; by which you
may go to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Journal, 11, 322.
 

 

 
[ 69 ]

Juty 23, 1851. On such a road (the Corner) } I
walk securely, seeing far and wide on both sides, as
if I were flanked by light infantry on the hills, to rout
the provincials, as the British marched into Concord,
while my grenadier thoughts keep the main road.
That is, my light-armed and wandering thoughts
scour the neighboring fields, and so I know if the
coast is clear. With what a breadth of van I advance!
I am not bounded by the walls. I think more than
the road full.

Journal, 11, 339.

1 Thoreau would hardly apostrophize the Corner road (?.¢., the road
to Nine-Acre Corner) to-day, for it has been carefully graded and mac-
adamized; the root fences, the little brook crossing the road, and other
features so attractive to him have disappeared, and there are plenty of
“No Trespassing” signs on either hand. Instead of walking securely,

his ‘‘ grenadier thoughts” would be chiefly occupied in the effort to avoid
disaster from the frequently passing automobiles! H. W. G.
Ei
BLUEBERRIES AND HUCKLEBERRIES

JuLy 24, 1853. The berries of the Vaccinium vacil-
lans [low blueberry] are very abundant and large
this year on Fair Haven, where I am now. Indeed,
these and huckleberries and blackberries are very
abundant in this part of the town. Nature does her
best to feed man. The traveller need not go out of
the road to get as many as he wants; every bush and
vine teems with palatable fruit. Man for once stands
in such relation to Nature as the animals that pluck
and eat as they go. The fields and hills are a table
constantly spread. Wines of all kinds and qualities,
of noblest vintage, are bottled up in the skins of
countless berries, for the taste of men and animals.
To men they seem offered not so much for food as for
sociality, that they may picnic with Nature, — diet
drinks, cordials, wines. We pluck and eat in remem-
brance of Her. It is a sacrament, a communion. The
not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to
taste. Slight and innocent savors, which relate us to
Nature, make us her guests and entitle us to her
regard and protection. It is a Saturnalia, and we
quaff her wines at every turn. This season of berry-
ing is so far respected that the children have a vaca-
tion to pick berries, and women and children who
never visit distant hills and fields and swamps on
any other errand are seen making haste thither now,
with half their domestic utensils in their hands. The
 
Lowe a

woodchopper goes into the swamp for fuel in the win-
ter; his wife and children for berries in the summer.
Journal, v, 330, 331.

JuLyY 6, 1852. The early blueberries ripen first on
the hills, before those who confine themselves to the
lowlands are aware of it. When the old folks find
only one turned here and there, children, who are
best acquainted with the locality of berries, bring
pailfuls to sell at their doors. For birds’ nests and
berries, give me a child’s eyes. But berries must be
eaten on the hills, and then how far from the sur-
feiting luxury of an alderman’s dinner!

Journal, tv, 196.
[ 72]
YEW BERRY

Aveust 10, 1858. Am surprised to find the yew
with ripe fruit, where I had not detected fertile
flowers. It fruits very sparingly, the berries grow-
ing singly here and there, on last year’s wood, and
hence four to six inches below the extremities of the
upturned twigs. It is the most surprising berry that
we have: first, since it is borne by an evergreen, hem-
lock-like bush with which we do not associate a soft
and bright-colored berry, and hence its deep scarlet
contrasts the more strangely with the pure, dark
evergreen needles; and secondly, because of its form,
so like art, and which could be easily imitated in wax,
a very thick scarlet cup or mortar with a dark-purple
bead set at the bottom. My neighbors are not pre-
pared to believe that such a berry grows in Concord.

Journal, x1, 90, 91.

RATTLESNAKE-PLANTAIN

Avucust 19, 1851. By the Marlborough road I
notice the richly veined leaves of the Neottia pubes-
_cens, or veined neottia, rattlesnake-plantain. I like
this last name very well, though it might not be easy
to convince a quibbler or proser of its fitness. We
want some name to express the mystic wildness of its
rich leaves. Such work as men imitate in their em-
broidery, unaccountably agreeable to the eye, as if it
 
Weed

answered its end only when it met the eye of man; a
reticulated leaf, visible only on one side; little things
which make one pause in the woods, take captive
the eye.

Journal, 11, 407.

Auaust 27, 1856. These oval leaves [of the rattle-
snake-plantain], perfectly smooth like velvet to the
touch, about one inch long, have a broad white mid-
rib and four to six longitudinal white veins, very
prettily and thickly connected by other conspicuous
white veins transversely and irregularly, all on a
dark rich green ground. Is it not the prettiest leaf
that paves the forest floor?

Journal, 1x, 28.
[ 74 J

ROSE MALLOW (MARSH HIBISCUS) -

Avueust 16, 1852. Hibiscus Moscheutos (?), marsh
hibiscus, apparently, N. Barrett’s. Perchance has
been out a week. I think it must be the most con-
spicuous and showy and at the same time rich-
colored flower of this month. It is not so conspicuous
as the sunflower, but of a rarer color, — “pale rose-
purple,” they call it, — like a hollyhock. It is sur-
prising for its amount of color, and, seen unexpect-
edly amid the willows and button-bushes, with the
mikania twining around its stem, you can hardly
believe it is a flower, so large and tender it looks, like
the greatest effort of the season to adorn the August
days, and reminded me of that great tender moth,
the Attacus luna, which I found on the water near
where it grows. I think it must be allied to southern
species. It suggests a more genial climate and luxu-
riant soil. It requires these vaporous dog-days.

Journal, Iv, 297, 298
 
[ 75 J

Avueust 18, 1852. To Joe Clark’s and Hibiscus
Bank. . . . The hibiscus flowers are seen a quarter of
a mile off over the water, like large roses, now that
these high colors are rather rare. Some are exceed-
ingly delicate and pale, almost white, just rose-
tinted, others a brighter pink or rose-color, and all
slightly plaited (the five large petals) and turned
toward the sun, now in the west, trembling in the
wind. So much color looks very rich in these locali-
ties. The flowers are some four inches in diameter,
as large as water-lilies, rising amid and above the
button-bushes and willows, with a large light-green
tree-like leaf and a stem half an inch in diameter,
apparently dying down to a perennial (?) root each
year. A superb flower. Where it occurs it is certainly,
next to the white lily, if not equally with it, the most
splendid ornament of the river. . . . As I made excur-
sions on the river when the white lilies were in bloom,
so now I should make a hibiscus excursion.

Journal, tv, 299, 301.
etd

CINNAMON FERNS IN CLINTONIA
SWAMP

Avucaust 23, 1858. I go through [Clintonia Swamp],
wading through the luxuriant cinnamon fern, which
has complete possession of the swamp floor. Its
great fronds, curving this way and that, remind me
of a tropical vegetation. They are as high as my
head and about a foot wide; may stand higher than
my head without being stretched out. They grow
in tufts of a dozen, so close that their fronds inter-
lace and form one green waving mass. There in the
swamp cellar under the maples. A forest of maples
rises from a forest of ferns. My clothes are covered
with the pale-brown wool which I have rubbed off
their stems.

Journal, x1, 118.

SEPTEMBER 24, 1859. Stedman Buttrick’s hand-
some maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns.
I stand on the elevated road, looking down into it.
The trees are very tall and slender, without branches
for a long distance. All the ground, which is per-
fectly level, is covered and concealed, as are the
bases of the trees, with the tufts of cinnamon fern,
now a pale brown. It is a very pretty sight, these
northern trees springing out of a groundwork of
 
Lae]

ferns. It is like pictures of the tropics, except that
here the palms are the undergrowth. You could not
have arranged a nosegay more tastefully. It is a
- rich groundwork, out of which the maples and pines
spring.

Journal, xi, 344.
TI. AUTUMN
[, 8e: J

BEAUTIFUL FUNGI

SEPTEMBER 1, 1856. With R. W. E[merson] to
Saw Mill [Brook]. We go admiring the pure and deli-
cate tints of fungi on the surface of the damp swamp
there, following up along the north side of the brook.
There are many very beautiful lemon-yellow ones
of various forms, some shaped like buttons, some
becoming finely scalloped on the edge, some club-
shaped and hollow, of the most delicate and rare but
decided tints, contrasting well with the decaying
leaves about them. There are others also pure white,
others a wholesome red, others brown, and some
even a light indigo-blue above and beneath and
throughout. When colors come to be taught in the
schools, as they should be, both the prism (or the
rainbow) and these fungi should be used by way of
illustration, and if the pupil does not learn colors,
he may learn fungi, which perhaps is better. You
almost envy the wood frogs and toads that hop amid
such gems, — some pure and bright enough for a
breastpin. Out of every crevice between the dead
leaves oozes some vehicle of color, the unspent

wealth of the year.
; Journal, 1x, 50, 51.
 
C 81 J
OctoBer 10, 1858. The simplest and most lump-
ish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared
with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously
organic and related to ourselves, however mute. It
is the expression of an idea; growth according to a
law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired,
appropriated by spirit. If I take up a handful of
earth, however separately interesting the particles
may be, their relation to one another appears to be
that of mere juxtaposition generally. I might have
thrown them together thus. But the humblest fungus
betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem
in its kind. There is suggested something superior
to any particle of matter, in the idea or mind which

uses and arranges the particles.

Journal, x1, 204.
[ 82 ]
LANE IN FRONT OF TARBELL’S

SEPTEMBER 4, 1851. The lane in front of Tarbell’s
house, which is but little worn and appears to lead
nowhere, though it has so wide and all-engulfing
an opening, suggested that such things might be
contrived for effect in laying out grounds. (Only
those things are sure to have the greatest and best
effect, which like this were not contrived for the sake
of effect.) An open path which would suggest walk-
ing and adventuring on it, the going to some place
strange and far away. It would make you think of
or imagine distant places and spaces greater than
the estate.

It was pleasant, looking back just beyond, to see
a heavy shadow (made by some high birches) reach-
ing quite across the road. Light and shadow are suffi-
cient contrast and furnish sufficient excitement when
we are well.

Now we were passing the vale of Brown and Tar-
bell, a sunshiny mead pastured by cattle and spark-
ling with dew, the sound of crows and swallows
heard in the air, and leafy-columned elms seen here
and there shining with dew. The morning freshness
and unworldliness of that domain! The vale of
Tempe and of Arcady is not farther off than are the
conscious lives of men from their opportunities. Our
life is as far from corresponding to its scenery as we
are distant from Tempe and Arcadia; that is to say,
 

 

 

 

 

 
[ 83 ]
they are far away because we are far from living
natural lives. How absurd it would be to insist on
the vale of Tempe in particular when we have such
vales as we have!
Journal, 11, 454.
[ 84 ]

SUNSET ON THE RIVER

SEPTEMBER 6, 1854. There are many clouds about
and a beautiful sunset sky, a yellowish (dunnish?)
golden sky, between them in the horizon, looking
up the river. The beauty of the sunset is doubled
by the reflection. Being on the water we have double
the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and
beneath. The reflected sky is more dun and richer
than the real one. Take a glorious sunset sky and
double it, so that it shall extend downward beneath
the horizon as much as above it, blotting out the
earth, and let the lowest half be of the deepest tint,
and every beauty more than before insisted on, and
you seem withal to be floating directly into it. It
was in harmony with this fair evening that we were
not walking or riding with dust and noise through
it, but moved by a paddle without a jar over the
liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly
toward those islands of the blessed which we call
clouds in the sunset sky.

Journal, vit, 19.
 

 

 
[ 85 J

We never tire of the drama of sunset. I go
forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter
of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to
see what new picture will be painted there, what
new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views.
Can Washington Street or Broadway show anything
as good? Every day a new picture is painted and
framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as
the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn and
the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and
long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask
curtains glow along the western window. And now
the first star is lit, and I go home.

Journal, 111, 179.
[, #6 J
GOLDENROD (SOLIDAGO NEMORALIS)

SEPTEMBER 12, 1859. To Moore’s Swamp and
Great Fields.

I stand in Moore’s Swamp and look at Garfield’s
dry bank, now before the woods generally are
changed at all. How ruddy ripe that dry hillside by
the swamp, covered with goldenrods and clumps of
hazel bushes here and there, now more or less scarlet.
The goldenrods on the top and the slope of the hill
are the Solidago nemoralis, at the base the taller
S. altissima. The whole hillside is perfectly dry and
ripe.

Many a dry field now, like that of Sted Buttrick’s
on the Great Fields, is one dense mass of the bright-
golden recurved wands of the Solidago nemoralis
(a little past prime), waving in the wind and turning
upward to the light hundreds, if not a thousand,
flowerets each. It is the greatest mass of conspicu-
ous flowers in the year, and uniformly from one to
two feet high, just rising above the withered grass
all over the largest fields, now when pumpkins and
other yellow fruits begin to gleam, now before the
woods are noticeably changed. Such a mass of yel-
low for this field’s last crop! Who that had botan-
ized here in the previous month could have foretold
this more profuse and teeming crop? All ringing, as
do the low grounds, with the shrilling of crickets and
locusts and frequented by honey-bees (i.e., the gold-
 
er

enrod nemoralis). The whole field turns to yellow,
as the cuticle of a ripe fruit. This is the season when
the prevalence of the goldenrods gives such a ripe
and teeming look to the dry fields and to the swamps.
The S. nemoralis spreads its legions over the dry
plains now, as soldiers muster in the fall. It is a
muster of all its forces, which I review, eclipsing all
other similar shows of the year. Fruit of August
and September, sprung from the sun-dust. The
fields and hills appear in their yellow uniform. There
are certain fields so full of them that they might
give their name to the town or region, as one place
in England is called Saffron Walden. Perhaps the
general prevalence of yellow is greater now when
many individual plants are past prime.
Journal, xu, 320-22.
[88 J
FALL ASTERS?

SEPTEMBER 14, 1856. Now for the Aster Trades-
canti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming
with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink.
How ever unexpected are these later flowers! You
thought that Nature had about wound up her affairs.
You had seen what she could do this year, and had
not noticed a few weeds by the roadside, or mistook
them for the remains of summer flowers now has-
tening to their fall; you thought you knew every
twig and leaf by the roadside, and nothing more
was to be looked for there; and now, to your surprise,
these ditches are crowded with millions of little
stars. They suddenly spring up and face you, with
their legions on each side the way, as if they had
lain in ambuscade there. The flowering of the
ditches. Call them travellers’ thoughts, numerous
though small, worth a penny at least, which, sown
in spring and summer, in the fall spring up unob-
served at first, successively dusted and washed,
mingled with nettles and beggar-ticks as a highway
harvest. A starry meteoric shower, a milky way,
in the flowery kingdom in whose aisles we travel.
Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and ex-
pand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors
may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an
Aster Nove-Anglie@ or spectabilis here and there, to

1 The photographs are of the A. Tradescantt and the A. Nove-Anglie.
 
[ 89 ]

remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed
this way. The gardener with all his assiduity does
not raise such a variety, nor so many successive
crops on the same space, as Nature in the very road-
side ditches. There they have stood, begrimed with
dust and the wash of the road so long, and made
acquaintance with passing sheep and cattle and
swine, gathering a trivial experience, and now at last
the fall rains have come to wash off some of that
dust, and even they exhibit these dense flowery pan-
icles as the result of all that experience, as pure for
an hour as if they grew by some wild brook-side.
Journal, 1x, 82, 83.
[ 90 ]

WITCH-HAZEL

THERE is something witchlike in the appearance of
the witch-hazel, which blossoms late in October and
in November, with its irregular and angular spray
and petals like furies’ hair, or small ribbon streamers.
Its blossoming, too, at this irregular period, when
other shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as blos-
soms, looks like witches’ craft. Certainly it blooms
in no garden of man’s.

Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 379.

OcroBEeR 9, 1851. To Conantum. The witch-
hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside,
while its broad yellow leaves are falling. It is an ex-
tremely interesting plant, — October and Novem-
ber’s child, and yet reminds me of the very earliest
spring. Its blossoms smell like the spring, like the
willow catkins; by their color as well as fragrance they
belong to the saffron dawn of the year, suggesting
amid all these signs of autumn, falling leaves and
frost, that the life of Nature, by which she eternally
flourishes, is untouched. It stands here in the
shadow on the side of the hill, while the sunlight from
over the top of the hill lights up its topmost sprays
and yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and an-
gular, is not to be mistaken for any other. [ lie
on my back with joy under its boughs. While its
 
[91 ]

leaves fall, its blossoms spring. The autumn, then,
is indeed a spring. All the year is a spring. I see two
blackbirds high overhead, going south, but I am
going north in my thought with these hazel blossoms.
It is a faery place. This is a part of the immortality
of the soul.

Journal, 111, 59, 60.
[ 92 ]

OCTOBER REFLECTIONS ON THE
ASSABET

OctoBer 17, 1858. Up Assabet. Methinks the
reflections are never purer and more distinct than
now at the season of the fall of the leaf, just before
the cool twilight has come, when the air has a finer
grain. Just as our mental reflections are more dis-
tinct at this season of the year, when the evenings
grow cool and lengthen and our winter evenings
with their brighter fires may be said to begin.

One reason why I associate perfect reflections from
still water with this and a later season may be that
now, by the fall of the leaves, so much more light
is let in to the water. The river reflects more light,
therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were an

afterglow.
Journal, x1, 216, 217.

SUN-LIGHTED TUFTS OF ANDROPOGON

OctToBER 16, 1859. When we emerged from the
pleasant footpath through the birches into Witherell
Glade, looking along it toward the westering sun,
the glittering white tufts of the Andropogon sco-
partus, lit up by the sun, were affectingly fair and
cheering to behold, ... their glowing half raised a
foot or more above the ground, a lighter and more
brilliant whiteness than the downiest cloud presents.
 

 

 

 
[ 93 ]

How cheerful these cold but bright white waving
tufts! They reflect all the sun’s light without a par-
ticle of his heat, or yellow rays. A thousand such
tufts now catch up the sun and send to us his light
but not heat. His heat is being steadily withdrawn
from us. Light without heat is getting to be the pre-
vailing phenomenon of the day now.
Journal, x1, 391, 392.

NoveMBeEr 8, 1859. The tufts of purplish withered
andropogon in Witherell Glade are still as fair as
ever, soft and trembling and bending from the wind;
of a very light mouse-color seen from the side of the
sun, and as delicate as the most fragile ornaments
of a lady’s bonnet; but looking toward the sun they
are a brilliant white, each polished hair (of the pap-
pus?) reflecting the November sun without its heats,
not in the least yellowish or brown like the golden-
rods and asters.

Journal, x11, 442.
[ 94 ]
COBWEB DRAPERY IN BARRETT’S MILL

OcToBER 19, 1858. Ride to Sam Barrett’s mill.
Am pleased again to see the cobweb drapery of the
mill.1_ Each fine line hanging in festoons from the
timbers overhead and on the sides, and on the dis-
carded machinery lying about, is covered and greatly
enlarged by a coating of meal, by which its curve
is revealed, like the twigs under their ridges of snow
in winter. It is like the tassels and tapestry of coun-
terpane and dimity in a lady’s bedchamber, and I
pray that the cobwebs may not have been brushed
away from the mills which I visit. It is as if I were
aboard a man-of-war, and this were the fine “rig-
ging” of the mill, the sails being taken in. All things
in the mill wear the same livery or drapery, down to
the miller’s hat and coat. I knew Barrett forty rods °
off in the cranberry meadow by the meal on his hat.

Barrett’s apprentice, it seems, makes trays of
black birch and of red maple, in a dark room under
the mill. I was pleased to see this work done here, a
wooden tray is so handsome. You could count the
circles of growth on the end of the tray, and the
dark heart of the tree was seen at each end above,
producing a semicircular ornament. It was a satis-
faction to be reminded that we may so easily make

* When this photograph was taken, the miller, on being told the pur-

pose of the photograph, remarked, ‘‘Oh, yes, those are the same cob-
webs that Thoreau saw here fifty years ago!”” H. W. G.
 

 
[ 95 J]

our own trenchers as well as fill them. To see the
tree reappear on the table, instead of going to the
fire or some equally coarse use, is some compensa-
tion for having it cut down.

Journal, x1, 224, 225.
[ 96 J
FRINGED GENTIAN

OcroBeErR 19, 1852. At 5 p.m. I found the fringed
gentian now somewhat stale and touched with frost,
being in the meadow toward Peter’s. Probably on
high, moist ground it is fresher. It may have been in
bloom a month. It has been cut off by the mower,
and apparently has put out in consequence a mass of
short branches full of flowers. This may make it later.
I doubt if I can find one naturally grown. At this hour
the blossoms are tightly rolled and twisted, and I see
that the bees have gnawed round holes in their sides
to come at the nectar. They have found them, though
I had not. “Full many a flower is born to blush un-
seen” by man. An hour ago I doubted if fringed gen-
tians were in Concord now, but, having found these,
they as it were surrender, and I hear of them at the
bottom of N. Barrett’s orchard toward the river, and
by Tuttle’s (?). They are now, at 8 a.M., opening a
little in a pitcher. It is too remarkable a flower not to
be sought out and admired each year, however rare.
It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the
bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It
is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon
this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue
flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of
our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to
bloom, unless it be the witch-hazel, when, excepting
the latter, flowers are reduced to that small Spartan
 
C97 ]
cohort, hardy, but for the most part unobserved,
which linger till the snow buries them, and those in-
teresting re-appearing flowers which, though fair and
fresh and tender, hardly delude us with the prospect
of a new spring, and which we pass by indifferent, as
if they only bloomed to die. Vide Bryant’s verses on
the Fringed Gentian. It is remarkable how tightly
the gentians roll and twist up at night, as if that were
their constant state. Probably those bees were work-
ing late that found it necessary to perforate the
flower.
Journal, tv, 390.
[ 98 ]
FALLEN LEAVES

For beautiful variety no crop can be compared
with this. Here is not merely the plain yellow of the
grains, but nearly all the colors that we know, the
brightest blue not excepted: the early blushing
maple, the poison sumach blazing its sins as scarlet,
the mulberry ash, the rich chrome yellow of the pop-
lars, the brilliant red huckleberry, with which the
hills’ backs are painted, like those of sheep. The
frost touches them, and, with the slightest breath of
returning day or jarring of earth’s axle, see in what
showers they come floating down! The ground is all
parti-colored with them. But they still live in the
soil, whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in
the forests that spring from it. They stoop to rise,
to mount higher in coming years, by subtle chem-
istry, climbing by the sap in the trees; and the sap-
ling’s first fruits thus shed, transmuted at last, may
adorn its crown, when, in after years, it has become
the monarch of the forest.

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh,
crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go
to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and
turn to mould! — painted of a thousand hues, and
fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to
their last resting-place, light and frisky. They that
soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to
dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
[ 99 J

at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to
new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter
on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if
the time will ever come when men, with their boasted
faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and
as ripe.

Excursions, 269, 270.
C 100 |]
LATE GREEN FERNS

Octoser 31, 1857. In the Lee farm swamp I see
two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit,
apparently the Aspidium spinulosum and cristatum.
They linger thus in all moist clammy swamps under
the bare maples and grape-vines and witch-hazels,
and about each trickling spring which is half choked
with fallen leaves. What means this persistent vital-
ity, invulnerable to frost and wet? Why were these
spared when the brakes and osmundas were stricken
down? ... Even in them I feel an argument for im-
mortality. Death is so far from being universal. To
my eyes they are tall and noble as palm groves, and
always some forest nobleness seems to have its haunt
under their umbrage.

Journal, x, 149, 150.

POLYPODY

NovemBer 2, 1857. It is very pleasant and cheer-
ful nowadays, when the brown and withered leaves
strew the ground and almost every plant is fallen
or withered, to come upon a patch of polypody on
some rocky hillside in the woods, where, in the midst
of the dry and rustling leaves, defying frost, it stands
so freshly green and full of life. The mere greenness,
which was not remarkable in the summer, is posi-
tively interesting now. My thoughts are with the
 

 
[ 101 ]

polypody a long time after my body has passed.
The brakes, the sarsaparilla, the osmundas, the Solo-
mon’s-seals, the lady’s-slippers, have long since with-
ered and fallen. The huckleberries and blueberries,
too, have lost their leaves. The forest floor is cov-
ered with a thick coat of moist brown leaves. But
what is that perennial and springlike verdure that
clothes the rocks, of small green plumes pointing
various ways? It is the cheerful community of the
polypody. It survives at least as the type of vegeta-
tion, to remind us of the spring which shall not fail.
These are the green pastures where I browse now.
Why is not this form copied by our sculptors instead
of the foreign acanthus leaves and bays?
Journal, x, 153, 154.
[ 102 |

NATURE’S DECORATION OF AN OLD
STUMP

NovemsBer 4, 1857. How swift Nature is to re-
pair the damage that man does! When he has cut
. down a tree and left only a white-topped and bleed-
ing stump, she comes at once to the rescue with her
chemistry, and covers it decently with a fresh coat
of gray, and in course of time she adds a thick coat
of green cup and bright cockscomb lichens, and it
becomes an object of new interest to the lover of
nature! Suppose it were always to remain a raw
stump instead! It becomes a shelf on which this
humble vegetation spreads and displays itself, and
we forget the death of the larger in the life of the less.

Journal, x, 160.

NovemeBer 8, 1858. Nature has many scenes to
exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this
part or that. She is constantly repainting the land-
scape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our
entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness,
now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will
surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she
thinks so good for our eyes, like blue, that she never
banishes it entirely, but has created evergreens.

Each phase of nature, while not invisible, is yet not
too distinct and obtrusive. It is there to be found
when we look for it, but not demanding our atten-
 

 

 

 
[ 108 J

tion. It is like a silent but sympathizing companion
in whose company we retain most of the advantages
of solitude, with whom we can walk and talk, or be
silent, naturally, without the necessity of talking in
a strain foreign to the place.

I go across N. Barrett’s land and over the road
beyond his house. The aspect of the Great Meadows
is now nearly uniform, the new and exposed grass
being nearly as brown and sere as that which was
not cut. Thus Nature has been blending and har-
monizing the colors here where man had interfered.

Journal, x1, 296-98.
[ 104 J
NOVEMBER WOODS

NovemMBer 8, 1850. The stillness of the woods and
fields is remarkable at this season of the year. There
is not even the creak of a cricket to be heard. Of
myriads of dry shrub oak leaves, not one rustles.
Your own breath can rustle them, yet the breath of
heaven does not suffice to. The trees have the aspect
of waiting for winter. The autumnal leaves have
lost their color; they are now truly sere, dead, and
the woods wear a sombre color. Summer and har-
vest are over. The hickories, birches, chestnuts, no
less than the maples, have lost their leaves. The
sprouts, which had shot up so vigorously to repair
the damage which the choppers had done, have
stopped short for the winter. Everything stands
silent and expectant. If I listen, I hear only the note
of a chickadee, — our most common and I may say
native bird, most identified with our forests, — or
perchance the scream of a jay, or perchance from
the solemn depths of these woods I hear tolling far
away the knell of one departed. Thought rushes in
to fill the vacuum. As you walk, however, the par-
tridge still bursts away. The silent, dry, almost leaf-
less, certainly fruitless woods. You wonder what
cheer that bird can find in them. The partridge
bursts away from the foot of a shrub oak like its own
dry fruit, immortal bird! This sound still startles us.
Dry goldenrods, now turned gray and white, lint
 
[ 105 ]

our clothes as we walk. And the drooping, downy
seed-vessels of the epilobium remind us of the sum-
mer. Perchance you will meet with a few solitary
asters in the dry fields, with a little color left. The
sumach is stripped of everything but its cone of red
berries.

Journal, 1, 85.
[ 106 J

FAIR HAVEN BAY THROUGH THE
WOODS

NovemMBER 6, 1853. Climbed the wooded hill by
Holden’s spruce swamp and got a novel view of the
river and Fair Haven Bay through the almost leaf-
less woods. How much handsomer a river or lake
such as ours, seen thus through a foreground of scat-
tered or else partially leafless trees, though at a con-
siderable distance this side of it, especially if the
water is open, without wooded shores or isles! It
is the most perfect and beautiful of all frames, which
yet the sketcher is commonly careful to brush aside.
I mean a pretty thick foreground, a view of the dis-
tant water through the near forest, through a thou-
sand little vistas, as we are rushing toward the for-
mer, — that intimate mingling of wood and water
which excites an expectation which the near and open
view rarely realizes. We prefer that some part be
concealed, which our imagination may navigate.

Journal, v, 480.
 

 

 

 

 
[ 107 ]

NovEMBER 21, 1850. I saw Fair Haven Pond with
its island, and meadow between the island and the
shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water
in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks
perhaps, sailing over it. I did not see how it could
be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can
be. I begin to see such an object when I cease to
understand it and see that I did not realize or appre-
ciate it before, but I get no further than this. How
adapted these forms and colors tomy eye! A meadow
and an island! What are these things? Yet the
hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so
reserved! I am made to love the pond and the
meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water.

Journal, 11, 107.
E 108 a
SHRUB OAK LEAVES

NovemMBer 29, 1857. Again I am struck by the
singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak
leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm
and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-
brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its
whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very
cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it
rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed,
“Winter, come on!” It exhibits the fashionable
colors of the winter on the two sides of its leaves. It
sets the fashions, colors good for bare ground or for
snow, grateful to the eyes of rabbits and partridges.
This is the extent of its gaudiness, red brown and
misty white, and yet it is gay. The colors of the
brightest flowers are not more agreeable to my eye.

Journal, x, 214.

DecemBer 1, 1856. The dear wholesome color
of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying,
but which have put ona kind of immortality, not
wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-
veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned
leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors,
color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath,
turned toward the late bleached and russet fields.
What are acanthus leaves and the rest to this? Em-
blem of my winter condition. I love and could em-
 

 
[ 109 J

brace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of
leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to
me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all
virtue. Covert which the hare and the partridge
seek, and I too seek. Rigid as iron, clean as the at-
mosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a
maiden is the shrub oak. In proportion as I know
and love it, I am natural and sound as a partridge.
I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this after-
noon. There was a match found for me at last. I
fell in love with a shrub oak.
Journal, 1x, 145.
IV. WINTER
[tae 7]
A WINTER SCENE FROM LEE’S CLIFF

DEcEMBER 7, 1856. Take my first skate to Fair
Haven Pond. ... That grand old poem called Win-
ter is round again without any connivance of mine.
As I sit under Lee’s Cliff, where the snow is melted,
amid sere pennyroyal and frost-bitten catnep, I look
over my shoulder upon an arctic scene. I see with
surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice
speckled with snow, just as so many winters before,
where so lately were lapsing waves or smooth reflect-
ing water. I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of
the pond. It seemed as if winter had come without
any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to
see it flit away by the time I again looked over my
shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it. But I see
that the farmers have had time to gather their har-
vests as usual, and the seasons have revolved as
slowly as in the first autumn of my life. The winters
come now as fast as snowflakes. It is wonderful
that old men do not lose their reckoning. It was
summer, and now again it is winter. Nature loves
this rhyme so well that she never tires of repeat-
ing it. So sweet and wholesome is the winter, so
simple and moderate, so satisfactory and perfect,
that her children will never weary of it. What a
poem! an epic in blank verse, enriched with a million
tinkling rhymes. It is solid beauty. It has been sub-
jected to the vicissitudes of millions of years of the
 

 
[113 ]

gods, and not a single superfluous ornament remains.
The severest and coldest of the immortal critics have
shot their arrows at it and pruned it till it cannot be
amended.

Journal, 1x, 165, 167, 168.
[ 114 J]

FROST CRYSTALS

DeEcEMBER 21, 1854. Walden is frozen over, ap-
parently about two inches thick. It is very thickly
covered with what C. calls ice-rosettes, 7.e., those
small pinches of crystallized snow, — as thickly as:
if it had snowed in that form. I think it is a sort of
hoar frost on the ice.

Journal, vu, 88.

JANUARY 1, 1856. On the ice at Walden are very
beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion. The
ice is frequently thickly covered with them for many
rods. They seem to be connected with the rosettes,
— arunning together of them. They look like a loose
web of small white feathers springing from a tuft of
down, as if a feather bed had been shaken over the
ice. They are, on a close examination, surprisingly
perfect leaves, like ferns, only very broad for their
length and commonly more on one side the midrib
than the other. They are so thin and fragile that they
melt under your breath while looking closely at them.

Journal, vu, 77.
 
[115 ]

DECEMBER 23, 1837. In the side of the high bank
by the Leaning Hemlocks, there were some curious
crystallizations. Wherever the water, or other
causes, had formed a hole in the bank, its throat and
outer edge, like the entrance to a citadel of the olden
time, bristled with a glistening ice armor. In one
place you might see minute ostrich feathers, which
seemed the waving plumes of the warriors filing into
the fortress, in another the glancing fan-shaped
banners of the Lilliputian host, and in another the
needle-shaped particles, collected into bundles resem-
bling the plumes of the pine, might pass for a pha-
lanx of spears. The whole hill was like an immense
quartz rock, with minute crystals sparkling from
innumerable crannies. I tried to fancy that there
was a disposition in these crystallizations to take the
forms of the contiguous foliage.

Journal, 1, 21, 22.
[ 116 7

ARCHITECTURE OF THE SNOW

DercEMBER 25, 1851. A wind is now blowing the
light snow into drifts, especially on the lee, now the
south, side of the walls, the outlines of the drifts
corresponding to the chinks in the walls and the
eddies of the wind. The snow glides, unperceived
for the most part, over the open fields until it reaches
an opposite wall, which it sifts through and is blown
over, blowing off from it like steam when seen in the
sun. As it passes through the chinks, it does not
drive straight onward, but curves gracefully upwards
into fantastic shapes, somewhat like the waves
which curve as they break upon the shore; that is,
as if the snow that passes through a chink were one
connected body, detained by the friction of its lower
side. It takes the form of saddles and shells and
porringers. It builds up a fantastic alabaster wall be-
hind the first, — a snowy sierra. Astonishingly sharp
and thin overhanging eaves it builds, even this dry
snow, where it has the least suggestion from a wall
or bank, — less than a mason ever springs his brick
from. This is the architecture of the snow.

Journal, 11, 154.
 

 

 

 

 
ate

DeEcEMBER 25, 1856. A strong wind from the
northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque
drifts behind the walls. As usual they resemble
shells more than anything, sometimes prows of ves-
sels, also the folds of a white napkin or counterpane
dropped over a bonneted head. There are no such
picturesque snow-drifts as are formed behind loose
and open stone walls.

Journal, 1x, 197.
[ 118 ]
TRACKS IN THE SNOW

JANUARY 1, 1854. The snow is the great betrayer.
We might expect to find in the snow the footprint of
a life superior to our own, of which no zoélogy takes
cognizance. Is there no trace of a nobler life than that
of an otter or an escaped convict to be looked for in
the snow? Shall we suppose that that is the only life
that has been abroad in the night? It is only the
savage that can see the track of no higher life than an
otter. Why do the vast snow plains give us pleasure,
the twilight of the bent and half-buried woods? Is
not all there consonant with virtue, justice, purity,
courage, magnanimity? Are we not cheered by the
sight? And does not all this amount to the track of a
higher life than the otter’s, a life which has not gone
by and left a footprint merely, but is there with its
beauty, its music, its perfume, its sweetness, to ex-
hilarate and recreate us? Where there is a perfect
government of the world according to the highest
laws, is there no trace of intelligence there, whether
in the snow or the earth, or in ourselves? No other
trail but such as a dog can smell? Is there none which
an angel can detect and follow? None to guide a man
on his pilgrimage, which water will not conceal? Is
there no odor of sanctity to be perceived? Is its trail
too old? Have mortals lost the scent? The great game
for mighty hunters as soon as the first snow falls is
Purity, for, earlier than any rabbit or fox, it is abroad,
 
[119 ]

and its trail may be detected by curs of lowest de-
gree. Did this great snow come to reveal the track
merely of some timorous hare, or of the Great Hare,
whose track no hunter has seen? Is there no trace
nor suggestion of Purity to be detected? If one could
detect the meaning of the snow, would he not be on
the trail of some higher life that has been abroad in
the night? A life which, pursued, does not earth it-
self, does not burrow downward but upward, which
takes not to the trees but to the heavens as its home,
which the hunter pursues with winged thoughts and
aspirations, — these the dogs that tree it, — rally-
ing his pack with the bugle notes of undying faith,
and returns with some worthier trophy than a fox’s
tail, a life which we seek, not to destroy it, but to save
our own?
Journal, vi, 43, 44.
[ 120 ]
AFTER THE ICE STORM!

JANUARY 1, 1853. This morning we have some-
thing between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The
whole earth, as last night, but much more, is encased
in ice, which on the plowed fields makes a singular icy
coat a quarter of an inch or more in thickness. This
frozen drizzle, collected around the slightest cores,
gives prominence to the least withered herbs and
grasses. Where yesterday was a plain, smooth field,
appears now a teeming crop of fat, icy herbage. The
stems of the herbs on their north sides are enlarged
from ten to a hundred times. What a crash of jewels
as you walk! The most careless walker, who never
deigned to look at these humble weeds before, cannot
help observing them now. The drooping birches
along the edges of woods are the most feathery,
fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color
of their trunks increases the delusion. The weight
of the ice gives to the pines the forms which northern
trees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending and
twisting the branches; for the twigs and plumes of
the pines, being frozen, remain as the wind held
them, and new portions of the trunk are exposed.

1 An ice-storm such as Thoreau describes so intimately is by no means
an annual occurrence in Concord. Indeed, in his entire journal Thoreau
mentions only one other similar phenomenon. It required some years of
“watchful waiting” before the opportunity arrived to secure photo-
graphs illustrating Thoreau’s description. The single view herewith re-
produced gives only a bare suggestion of the beauty of the outdoor world
under such conditions. H. W. G.
 

 

 
f 121 |

Seen from the north, there is no greenness in the
pines, and the character of the tree is changed. The
willows along the edge of the river look like sedge
in meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowy
hail and rain is falling, and these ghost-like trees
make a scenery which reminds you of Spitzbergen.
I see now the beauty of the causeway, by the bridge
alders below swelling into the road, overtopped by
willows and maples. The fine grasses and shrubs in
the meadow rise to meet and mingle with the droop-
ing willows, and the whole make an indistinct impres-
sion like a mist, and between this the road runs
toward those white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees in
the distance, — toward spirit-land.
Journal, 1v, 436-38.
[ i22 ]

HEAVY SNOW ON PITCH PINES

JANUARY 7, 1852. This afternoon, in dells of the
wood and on the lee side of the woods, where the
wind has not disturbed it, the snow still lies on the
trees as richly as I ever saw it. It was just moist
enough to stick. The pitch pines wear it best; their
plumes hang down like the feathers of the ostrich
or the tail of the cassowary, so purely white, — I
am sorry that I cannot say snowy white, for in purity
it is like nothing but itself. From contrast with the
dark needles and stems of the trees, whiter than ever
on the ground. The trees are bent under the weight
into a great variety of postures, — arches, etc. Their
branches and tops are so consolidated by the bur-
den of snow, and they stand in such new attitudes,
the tops often like canopies or parasols, agglomer-
ated, that they remind me of the pictures of palms
and other Oriental trees. Sometimes the lower
limbs of the pitch pine, under such plumes and cano-
pies, bear each their ridge of snow, crossing and
interlacing each other like lattice-work, so that you
cannot look more than a rod into the rich tracery.

Journal, 11, 177.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
[115 ]

DEcEMBER 23, 1837. In the side of the high bank
by the Leaning Hemlocks, there were some curious
crystallizations. Wherever the water, or other
causes, had formed a hole in the bank, its throat and
outer edge, like the entrance to a citadel of the olden
time, bristled with a glistening ice armor. In one
place you might see minute ostrich feathers, which
seemed the waving plumes of the warriors filing into
the fortress, in another the glancing fan-shaped
banners of the Lilliputian host, and in another the
needle-shaped particles, collected into bundles resem-
bling the plumes of the pine, might pass for a pha-
lanx of spears. The whole hill was like an immense
quartz rock, with minute crystals sparkling from
innumerable crannies. I tried to fancy that there
was a disposition in these crystallizations to take the
forms of the contiguous foliage.

Journal, 1, 21, 22.
Ea6. 7

ARCHITECTURE OF THE SNOW

DscreMBER 25, 1851. A wind is now blowing the
light snow into drifts, especially on the lee, now the
south, side of the walls, the outlines of the drifts
corresponding to the chinks in the walls and the
eddies of the wind. The snow glides, unperceived
for the most part, over the open fields until it reaches
an opposite wall, which it sifts through and is blown
over, blowing off from it like steam when seen in the
sun. As it passes through the chinks, it does not
drive straight onward, but curves gracefully upwards
into fantastic shapes, somewhat like the waves
which curve as they break upon the shore; that is,
as if the snow that passes through a chink were one
connected body, detained by the friction of its lower
side. It takes the form of saddles and shells and
porringers. It builds up a fantastic alabaster wall be-
hind the first, — a snowy sierra. Astonishingly sharp
and thin overhanging eaves it builds, even this dry
snow, where it has the least suggestion from a wall
or bank, — less than a mason ever springs his brick
from. This is the architecture of the snow.

Journal, 111, 154.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
[117 J

DecEMBER 25, 1856. A strong wind from the
northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque
drifts behind the walls. As usual they resemble
shells more than anything, sometimes prows of ves-
sels, also the folds of a white napkin or counterpane
dropped over a bonneted head. There are no such
picturesque snow-drifts as are formed behind loose
and open stone walls.

Journal, 1x, 197.
L428]
TRACKS IN THE SNOW

JANUARY 1, 1854. The snow is the great betrayer.
We might expect to find in the snow the footprint of
a life superior to our own, of which no zodlogy takes
cognizance. Is there no trace of a nobler life than that
of an otter or an escaped convict to be looked for in
the snow? Shall we suppose that that is the only life
that has been abroad in the night? It is only the
savage that can see the track of no higher life than an
otter. Why do the vast snow plains give us pleasure,
the twilight of the bent and half-buried woods? Is
not all there consonant with virtue, justice, purity,
courage, magnanimity? Are we not cheered by the
sight? And does not all this amount to the track of a
higher life than the otter’s, a life which has not gone
by and left a footprint merely, but is there with its
beauty, its music, its perfume, its sweetness, to ex-
hilarate and recreate us? Where there is a perfect
government of the world according to the highest
laws, is there no trace of intelligence there, whether
in the snow or the earth, or in ourselves? No other
trail but such as a dog can smell? Is there none which
an angel can detect and follow? None to guide a man
on his pilgrimage, which water will not conceal? Is
there no odor of sanctity to be perceived? Is its trail
too old? Have mortals lost the scent? The great game
for mighty hunters as soon as the first snow falls is
Purity, for, earlier than any rabbit or fox, it is abroad,
 
[119 J

and its trail may be detected by curs of lowest de-
gree. Did this great snow come to reveal the track
merely of some timorous hare, or of the Great Hare,
whose track no hunter has seen? Is there no trace
nor suggestion of Purity to be detected? If one could
detect the meaning of the snow, would he not be on
the trail of some higher life that has been abroad in
the night? A life which, pursued, does not earth it-
self, does not burrow downward but upward, which
takes not to the trees but to the heavens as its home,
which the hunter pursues with winged thoughts and
aspirations, — these the dogs that tree it, — rally-
ing his pack with the bugle notes of undying faith,
and returns with some worthier trophy than a fox’s
tail, a life which we seek, not to destroy it, but to save
our own?
Journal, vi, 43, 44.
[. 120 |]
AFTER THE ICE STORM!

January 1, 1853. This morning we have some-
thing between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The
whole earth, as last night, but much more, is encased
in ice, which on the plowed fields makes a singular icy
coat a quarter of an inch or more in thickness. This
frozen drizzle, collected around the slightest cores,
gives prominence to the least withered herbs and
grasses. Where yesterday was a plain, smooth field,
appears now a teeming crop of fat, icy herbage. The
stems of the herbs on their north sides are enlarged
from ten to a hundred times. What a crash of jewels
as you walk! The most careless walker, who never
deigned to look at these humble weeds before, cannot
help observing them now. The drooping birches
along the edges of woods are the most feathery,
fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color
of their trunks increases the delusion. The weight
of the ice gives to the pines the forms which northern
trees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending and
twisting the branches; for the twigs and plumes of
the-pines, being frozen, remain as the wind held
them, and new portions of the trunk are exposed.

1 An ice-storm such as Thoreau describes so intimately is by no means
an annual occurrence in Concord. Indeed, in his entire journal Thoreau
mentions only one other similar phenomenon. It required some years of
“watchful waiting’? before the opportunity arrived to secure photo-
graphs illustrating Thoreau’s description. The single view herewith re-
produced gives only a bare suggestion of the beauty of the outdoor world
under such conditions. H. W. G.
 
E -agae ]

Seen from the north, there is no greenness in the
pines, and the character of the tree is changed. The
willows along the edge of the river look like sedge
in meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowy
hail and rain is falling, and these ghost-like trees
make a scenery which reminds you of Spitzbergen.
I see now the beauty of the causeway, by the bridge
alders below swelling into the road, overtopped by
willows and maples. The fine grasses and shrubs in
the meadow rise to meet and mingle with the droop-
ing willows, and the whole make an indistinct impres-
sion like a mist, and between this the road runs
toward those white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees in
the distance, — toward spirit-land.
Journal, tv, 436-38.
[ 122 |]

HEAVY SNOW ON PITCH PINES

JANUARY 7, 1852. This afternoon, in dells of the
wood and on the lee side of the woods, where the
wind has not disturbed it, the snow still lies on the
trees as richly as I ever saw it. It was just moist
enough to stick. The pitch pines wear it best; their
plumes hang down like the feathers of the ostrich
or the tail of the cassowary, so purely white, — I
am sorry that I cannot say snowy white, for in purity
it is like nothing but itself. From contrast with the
dark needles and stems of the trees, whiter than ever
on the ground. The trees are bent under the weight
into a great variety of postures, — arches, etc. Their
branches and tops are so consolidated by the bur-
den of snow, and they stand in such new attitudes,
the tops often like canopies or parasols, agglomer-
ated, that they remind me of the pictures of palms
and other Oriental trees. Sometimes the lower
limbs of the pitch pine, under such plumes and cano-
pies, bear each their ridge of snow, crossing and
interlacing each other like lattice-work, so that you
cannot look more than a rod into the rich tracery.

Journal, 111, 177.
 

 

 

 

 
[ 123 ]

JANUARY 30, 1841. The trees covered with snow
admit a very plain and clean light, but not brilliant,
as if through windows of ground glass; a sort of white
darkness it is, all of the sun’s splendor that can be
retained.

You glance up these paths, closely imbowered by
bent trees, as through the side aisles of a cathedral,
and expect to hear a choir chanting from their depths.
You are never so far in them as they are far before
you. Their secret is where you are not and where
your feet can never carry you.

The snow falls on no two trees alike, but the forms
it assumes are as various as those of the twigs and
leaves which receive it. They are, as it were, pre-
determined by the genius of the tree. So one divine
spirit descends alike on all, but bears a peculiar fruit
in each. The divinity subsides on all men, as the
snowflakes settle on the fields and ledges and takes
the form of the various clefts and surfaces on which
it lodges.

Journal, 1, 184, 185.
[ 124 J
THE SWAMP IN WINTER

JANUARY 10, 1856. I love to wade and flounder
through the swamp now, these bitter cold days when
the snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel
but little way from the town to get to a Nova Zembla
solitude, — to wade through the swamps, all snowed
up, untracked by man, into which the fine dry snow
is still drifting till it is even with the tops of the
water andromeda and half-way up the high blue-
berry bushes. I penetrate to islets inaccessible in
summer, my feet slumping to the sphagnum far out
of sight beneath, where the alder berry glows yet
and the azalea buds, and perchance a single tree
sparrow or a chickadee lisps by my side, where there
are few tracks even of wild animals; perhaps only a
mouse or two have burrowed up by the side of some
twig, and hopped away in straight lines on the sur-
face of the light, deep snow, as if too timid to delay,
to another hole by the side of another bush; and a
few rabbits have run in a path amid the blueberries
and alders about the edge of the swamp. This is
instead of a Polar Sea expedition and going after
Franklin. There is but little life and but few objects,
it is true. We are reduced to admire buds, even like
the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice,
— the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of
the azalea, the plump red ones of the blueberry, and
the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda,
 

 

 
[ 125 J

sleeping along its stem, the speckled black alder, the
rapid-growing dogwood, the pale-brown and cracked
blueberry, etc. Even a little shining bud which lies
sleeping behind its twig and dreaming of spring, per-
haps half concealed by ice, is object enough. I feel
myself upborne on the andromeda bushes beneath
the snow, as on a springy basketwork, then down I
go up to my middle in the deep but silent snow, which
has no sympathy with my mishap. Beneath the level
of this snow how many sweet berries will be hanging
next August!
Journal, vit, 99, 100.
[ 126 ]
A LODGING SNOW

JANUARY 20, 1855. In many instances the snow
had lodged on trees yesterday in just such forms as
a white napkin or counterpane dropped on them
would take,— protuberant in the middle, with
many folds and dimples. An ordinary leafless bush
supported so much snow on its twigs — a perfect
maze like a whirligig, though not in one solid mass
— that you could not see through it. Sometimes the
snow on the bent pitch pines made me think of rams’
or elephants’ heads, ready to butt you. In particular
places, standing on their snowiest side, the woods
were incredibly fair, white as alabaster. Indeed, the
young pines reminded you of the purest statuary,
and the stately full-grown ones towering around
affected you as if you stood in a titanic sculptor’s
studio, so purely and delicately white, transmitting
the light, their dark trunks all concealed. And in
many places, where the snow lay on withered oak
leaves between you and the light, various delicate
fawn-colored and cinnamon tints, blending with
the white, still enhanced the beauty.

I doubt if I can convey an idea! of the appearance
of the woods yesterday, as you stood in their midst
and looked round on their boughs and twigs laden

1 This is Thoreau’s conclusion after more than ten pages of attempted
description of the beauty of Concord woods under their burden of snow.
Needless to say, no photograph, or series of photographs, can be more
successful. H. W. G.
 

 

 

 

 
[ wey |

with snow. It seemed as if there could have been
none left to reach the ground. These countless zig-
zag white arms crossing each other at every possible
angle completely closed up the view, like a light drift
within three or four rods on every side. The win-
triest prospect imaginable.

Journal, vit, 122, 123, 128.
[ 128 ]
THE BROOK IN WINTER

JANUARY 12, 1855. Perhaps what most moves us
in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer.
How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What
beauty in the running brooks! What life! What
society! The cold is merely superficial; it is.‘summer
still at the core, far, far within.

Journal, vu, 112.

JANUARY 31, 1852. I observed this afternoon, on
the Turnpike, that where it drifts over the edge of a
brook or a ditch, the snow being damp as it falls,
what does not adhere to the sharp edge of the drift
falls on the dead weeds and shrubs and forms a
drapery like a napkin or a white tablecloth hanging
down with folds and tassels or fringed border. Or
perhaps the fresh snow merely rounds and whitens
thus the old cores.

Journal, 111, 260.

THE RIVER AS A WINTER HIGHWAY

JANUARY 20, 1856. It is now good walking on the
river, for, though there has been no thaw since the
snow came, a great part of it has been converted into
snow ice by sinking the old ice beneath the water,
and the crust of the rest is stronger than in the fields,
because the snow is so shallow and has been so moist.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
[ 129 ]

The river is thus an advantage as a highway, not only
in summer and when the ice is bare in the winter,
but even when the snow lies very deep in the fields.
It is invaluable to the walker, being now not only
the most interesting, but, excepting the narrow and
unpleasant track in the highways, the only practi-
cable route. The snow never lies so deep over it as
elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks the ice and is soon
converted into snow ice to a great extent, beside
being blown out of the river valley. Here, where
you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walk-
ing than elsewhere in the winter. ,
Journal, vu, 121.
[ 180 ]
THE TRACKS OF A FOX

Prruaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox!
has obtained the widest and most familiar reputation,
from the time of Pilpay and sop to the present day.
His recent tracks still give variety to a winter’s walk.
I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before me
by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with
such a tiptoe of expectation as if I were on the trail
of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood, and
expected soon to catch it in its lair. I am curious to
know what has determined its graceful curvatures,
and how surely they were coincident with the fluc-
tuations of some mind. I know which way a mind
wended, what horizon it faced, by the setting of these
tracks, and whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by
their greater or less intervals and distinctness; for the
swiftest step leaves yet a lasting trace. Sometimes
you will see the trails of many together, and where
they have gamboled and gone through a hundred
evolutions, which testify to a singular listlessness
and leisure in nature.

When I see a fox run across the pond on the snow,
with the carelessness of freedom, or at intervals trace
his course in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill, I
give up to him sun and earth as to their true proprie-

1 In spite of numerous fex-hunters, with their packs of trained hounds,
Reynard manages to survive in Concord, and it is still true — though to
a less degree than in Thoreau’s day — that “‘his recent tracks give variety
to a winter’s walk.” H. W. G.
[131 ]
tor. He does not go in the sun, but it seems to follow
him, and there is a visible sympathy between him and
it. Sometimes, when the snow lies light and but five
or six inches deep, you may give chase and come up
with one on foot. In such a case he will show a re-
markable presence of mind, choosing only the safest
direction, though he may lose ground by it. Not-
withstanding his fright, he will take no step which is
not beautiful. His pace is a sort of leopard canter,
as if he were in no wise impeded by the snow, but
were husbanding his strength all the while. He runs
as though there were not a bone in his back.
Excursions, 117, 118.
[ 132 ]
ICICLE “ORGAN-PIPES”

FEBRUARY 14, 1852. At the Cliffs, the rocks are
in some places covered with ice; and the least incli-
nation beyond a perpendicular in their faces is be-
trayed by the formation of icicles at once, which hang
perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the
rock. They are now conducting downward the melt-
ing ice and snow, which drips from their points with
a slight clinking and lapsing sound, but when the
sun has set will freeze there and add to the icicles’
length. Where the icicles have reached the ground
and are like thick pillars, they have a sort of annu-
lar appearance, somewhat like the successive swells
on the legs of tables and on bed-posts. There is per-
haps a harmony between the turner’s taste and the
law of nature in this instance. The shadow of the
water flowing or pulsating behind this transparent
icy crust or these stalactites in the sun imparts a
semblance of life to the whole.

Journal, 111, 303.

NORTH BRANCH NEAR HARRINGTON’S

Frsruary 27, 1852. The main river is not yet
open but in very few places, but the North Branch,
which is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell’s
and Harrington’s, where I walked to-day, and, flow-
ing with full tide bordered with ice on either side,
 

 

 

 
L, ies J

sparkles in the clear, cool air, —a silvery sparkle
as from a stream that would not soil the sky.

Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a mod-
erately cool and pleasant day near the end of winter.
We have almost completely forgotten summer. This
restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fet-
ters, and as J stand looking up it westward for half a
mile, where it winds slightly under a high bank, its
surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained
silvery sparkle which makes the river appear some-
thing celestial,— more than a terrestrial river, —
which might: have suggested that which surrounded
the shield in Homer. If rivers come out of their icy
prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too re-
sume my spring life with joy and hope? Have I no
hopes to sparkle on the surface of life’s current?

Journal, 111, 322.
[ 134 ]

WINTER

WHEN winter fringes every bough
With his fantastic wreath,

And puts the seal of silence now
Upon the leaves beneath;

When every stream in its penthouse
Goes gurgling on its way,

And in his gallery the mouse
Nibbleth the meadow hay;

Methinks the summer still is nigh,
And lurketh underneath,

As that same meadow mouse doth lie
Snug in that last year’s heath. .

And if perchance the chickadee
Lisp a faint note anon,

The snow is summer’s canopy,
Which she herself put on.

Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees,
And dazzling fruits depend;

The north wind sighs a summer breeze,
The nipping frosts to fend,
 

 

 

 

 
[ 135 J

Bringing glad tidings unto me,
The while I stand all ear,
Of a serene eternity,

Which need not winter fear.
Excursions, 176, 177.
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