John Burroughs

“ Since beauty is the chief attraction, why not have this part alone, pure and unadulterated,—why not pluck the plumage from the bird, the flower from its stalk, the moss from the rock, the shell from the shore, the honey-bag from the bee, and thus have in brief what pleases us? Hence, with rare exceptions, one feels, on opening the latest book of poems, like exclaiming, Well, here is the beautiful at last divested of everything else,—of truth, of power, of utility,—and one may add of beauty, too. It charms as color, or flowers, or jewels, or perfume charms—and that is the end of it. ”

“ Hence we have in Whitman the whole human attitude towards the universe, towards God, towards life and death, towards good and evil, completely changed. We have absolute faith and acceptance in place of the fear and repentance of the old creeds; we have death welcomed as joyously as life, we have political and social equality as motifs and impulses, and not merely as sentiments. He would show us the muse of poetry, as impartial, as sweeping in its vision, as modern, as real, as free from the morbid and make-believe, as the muse of science. He sees good in all, beauty in all. ”

“ Your real lover of nature does not love merely the beautiful things which he culls here and there; he loves the earth itself, the faces of the hills and mountains, the rocks, the streams, the naked trees no less than the leafy trees,—a plowed field no less than a green meadow. He does not know what it is that draws him. It is not beauty, any more than it is beauty in his father and mother that makes him love them. It is "something far more deeply interfused,"—something native and kindred that calls to him. In certain moods how good the earth, the soil, seems! ”

“ A novel spectacle often occurs in summer, when the female has young. You are rambling on the mountain, accompanied by your dog, when you are startled by that wild, half-threatening squall, and in a moment perceive your dog, with inverted tail, and shame and confusion in his looks, sneaking toward you, the old fox but a few rods in his rear. You speak to him sharply, when he bristles up, turns about, and, barking, starts off vigorously, as if to wipe out the dishonor; but in a moment comes sneaking back more abashed than ever, and owns himself unworthy to be called a dog. ”

“ Mountains of peace and repose, hills and valleys with the flowing lines of youth, coming down to us from the fore- world of Palaeozoic time, yet only rounded and mellowed by the aeons they have passed through. Old, oh, so old, but young with verdure and limpid streams, and the pastoral spirit of to-day!
To the geologist most mountains are short-lived. When he finds great sturdy ranges, like the Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas, he knows they are young,—mere boys. When they get old, they will be cut down, and their pride and glory gone. ”

“ A cry without music, insistent, reiterated, loud, penetrating, and yet the ear welcomes it; the night and the solitude are so vast that they can stand it; and when, an hour later, as the night enters into full possession, the bird comes and serenades me under my window or upon my doorstep, my heart warms toward it. Its cry is a love-call, and there is something of the ardor and persistence of love in it, and when the female responds, and comes and hovers near, there is an interchange of subdued, caressing tones between the two birds that it is a delight to hear. ”

“ Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; He is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grosbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways. Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly, and domestic in his habits, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the pioneer of the thrush family, and well worthy of the finer artists whose coming he heralds and in a measure prepares us for.
I could wish Robin less native and plebeian in one respect,—the building of his nest. ”

“ Crossing the range at its head, we struck the Neversink quite unexpectedly about the middle of the afternoon, at a point where it was a good-sized trout stream. It proved to be one of those black mountain brooks born of innumerable ice-cold springs, nourished in the shade, and shod, as it were, with thick-matted moss, that every camper-out remembers. The fish are as black as the stream and very wild. They dart from beneath the fringed rocks, or dive with the hook into the dusky depths,—an integral part of the silence and the shadows. The spell of the moss is over all. ”

“ All this is a very human way of looking at the matter, and is typical of the way we all—most of us—speak of the lower animals, defining them to ourselves in terms of our own mentality, but it leads to false notions about them. We look upon an animal fretting and struggling in its cage as longing for freedom, picturing to itself the joy of the open air and the free hills and sky, when the truth of the matter undoubtedly is that the fluttering bird or restless fox or lion simply feels discomfort in confinement. ”

“ Like a vast fiery worm it lay across the northern sky, broken into many pieces; and each piece, with rainbow colors skirting it, strove to advance itself toward the east, worm-like, on its own annular muscles. It has spread into their choicest wood-lots. Now it shoots up like a single solitary watch-fire or burning bush, or where it ran up a pine tree like powder, and still it continues to gleam here and there like a fat stump in the burning, and is reflected in the water. And now I see the gods [141] by great exertions have got it under, and the stars have come out without fear, in peace. ”

“ On the whole, a high-bred, courtly, chivalrous song; a song for ladies to hear leaning from embowered windows on moonlight nights; a song for royal parks and groves,—and easeful but impassioned life. We have no bird-voice so piercing and loud, with such flexibility and compass, such full-throated harmony and long-drawn cadences; though we have songs of more melody, tenderness, and plaintiveness. None but the nightingale could have inspired Keats's ode,—that longing for self-forgetfulness and for the oblivion of the world, to escape the fret and fever of life. ”

“ April is my natal month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two syllables are like the calls of the first birds,—like that of the phœbe-bird, or of the meadow-lark. Its very snows are fertilizing, and are called the poor man's manure.
Then its odors! I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribable odors,—the perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots and rootlets, of the mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows. No other month has odors like it. ”

“ THERE is one respect in which pure art and pure science agree: both are disinterested, and seek the truth, each of its kind, for its own sake; neither has any axe to grind. Both would live in the whole,—one through reason and investigation, the other through imagination and contemplation. Science seeks to understand the universe, art to enjoy it. A man of pure science like Darwin is as disinterested as a great artist like Shakespeare. He has no practical or secondary ends; the truth alone is his quest. He is tracing the footsteps of creative energy through organic nature. ”

“ It is a new kind of foliage wrought by the frost and the clouds, and it obscures the sky, and fills the vistas of the woods nearly as much as the myriad leaves of summer. The sun blazes, the sky is without a cloud or a film, yet we walk in a soft white shade. A gentle breeze was blowing on the open crest of the mountain, but one could carry a lighted candle through these snow-curtained and snow-canopied chambers. How shall we see the fox if the hound drives him through this white obscurity? But we listen in vain for the voice of the dog and press on. ”

“ It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic man,—a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics, the heroes of land and sea.
Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things, real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distilled and concentrated, but the all but impalpable odor of the open air, the shore, the wood, the hilltop. It aims, not to be a book, but to be a man. ”

“ Its short tail, its round wings, its long and strong legs and feet, its short beak, its mottled coat, the touch of yellow, as if he had just rubbed against a newly-opened dandelion, but in this case on the wings instead of on the breast, the quality of its voice, and its general shape and habits, all suggest a tiny edition of this large emphatic walker of our meadows.
The song of this little sparrow is like the words "chick, chick-a-su-su," uttered with a peculiar buzzing sound. Its nest is placed upon the ground in the open field, with four or five speckled eggs. ”

“ The human spirit, the brute spirit, the vegetable spirit—all are mere names to fill a void. The spirit of the oak, the beech, the pine, the palm—how different! how different the plan or idea or interior economies of each, though the chemical and mechanical processes are the same, the same mineral and gaseous elements build them up, the same sun is their architect! But what physical principle can account for the difference between a pine and an oak, or, for that matter, between a man and his dog, or a bird and a fish, or a crow and a lark? ”

“ All true beauty in nature or in art is like the iridescent hue of mother-of-pearl, which is intrinsic and necessary, being the result of the arrangement of the particles,—the flowering of the mechanism of the shell; or like the beauty of health which comes out of and reaches back again to the bones and the digestion. There is no grace like the grace of strength. What sheer muscular gripe and power lie back of the firm, delicate notes of the great violinist! "Wit," says Heine,—and the same thing is true of beauty,—"isolated, is worthless. It is only endurable when it rests on a solid basis." ”

“ It is undoubtedly true, however, that as time wears on, life becomes of a soberer hue. We are young but once, and need not wish to be young more than once. There is the happiness of youth, there is the happiness of manhood, there is the happiness of old age,—each period wearing a hue peculiar to itself. One of the illusions of life, however, which it is hard to shake off, is the fancying we were happier in the past than we are in the present. The past has such power to hallow and heighten effects! ”

“ But as the harvest ripens beneath the long, hot days, the melody gradually ceases. The young are out of the nest and must be cared for, and the moulting season is at hand. After the cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the wood thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, as you approach the vicinity of his nest, oscillating between anxiety for his brood and solicitude for his musical reputation. ”

“ What a training to the eye is hunting! To pick out the game from its surroundings, the grouse from the leaves, the gray squirrel from the mossy oak limb it hugs so closely, the red fox from the ruddy or brown or gray field, the rabbit from the stubble, or the white hare from the snow requires the best powers of this sense. A woodchuck, motionless in the fields or upon a rock, looks very much like a large stone or bowlder, yet a keen eye knows the difference at a glance, a quarter of a mile away. ”

“ These mountains we behold and cross are not picturesque,—they are wild and inhuman as the sea. In them you are in a maze, in a weltering world of woods; you can see neither the earth nor the sky, but a confusion of the growth and decay of centuries, and must traverse them by your compass or your science of woodcraft,—a rift through the trees giving one a glimpse of the opposite range or of the valley beneath, and he is more at sea than ever; one does not know his own farm or settlement when framed in these mountain treetops; all look alike unfamiliar. ”

“ Emerson thought that science as such bereaved Nature of her charm. To the man of little or no imagination or sensibility to beauty, Nature has no charm anyhow, but if he have these gifts, they will certainly survive scientific knowledge, and be quickened and heightened by it.
After we have learned all that the astronomers can tell us about the midnight heavens, do we look up at the stars with less wonder and awe? After we have learned all that the chemist and the physicist can tell us about matter—its interior activities and its exterior laws and relations—do we admire and marvel less? ”

“ The globe is peopled as it is because the creative energy was blind and did not at once find the single straight road to man. Had the law of variation worked only in one direction, man might have found himself the sole occupant of the universe. Behold the varieties of trees, of shrubs, of grasses, of birds, of insects, because Nature does not work as man does, with an eye single to one particular end. She scatters, she sows her seed upon the wind, she commits her germs to the waves and the floods. Nature is indifferent to waste, because what goes out of one pocket goes into another. ”

“ The trees drop their leaves, or let go their ripened fruit. The tree itself will fall in a still, damp day, when but yesterday it withstood a gale of wind. A moist south wind penetrates even the mind and makes its grasp less tenacious. It ought to take less to kill a man on a rainy day than on a clear. The direct support of the sun is withdrawn; life is under a cloud; a masculine mood gives place to something like a feminine. In this sense, rain is the grief, the weeping of Nature, the relief of a burdened or agonized heart. ”

“ From several points along the course of a bushy little creek there came a song, or a melody of notes and calls, that also put me out,—the tipsy, hodge-podge strain of the polyglot chat, a strong, olive-backed, yellow-breasted, black-billed bird, with a voice like that of a jay or a crow that had been to school to a robin or an oriole,—a performer sure to arrest your ear and sure to elude your eye. There is no bird so afraid of being seen, or fonder of being heard. ”

“ He sees nature through a colored glass, sees it truthfully, but with an indescribable charm added, the aureole of the spirit. A tree, a cloud, a bird, a sunset, have no hidden meaning that the art of the poet is to unlock for us. Every poet shall interpret them differently, and interpret them rightly, because the soul is infinite. Milton's nightingale is not Coleridge's; Burns's daisy is not Wordsworth's; Emerson's bumblebee is not Lowell's; nor does Turner see in nature what Tintoretto does, nor Veronese what Correggio does. Nature is all things to all men. ”

“ Now I shall deny at the outset that there are any bounds of art, or that art is in any sense an "enclosure,"—a province fenced off and set apart from the rest,—any more than religion is an enclosure, though so many people would like to make it so. Art is commensurate with the human spirit. I should even deny that there are any principles of art in the sense that there are principles of mechanics or of mathematics. Art has but one principle, one aim,—to produce an impression, a powerful impression, no matter by what means, or if it be by reversing all the canons of taste and criticism. ”

“ There is a world within us also, the world of our memories, thoughts, emotions, aspirations, imaginings, which overarches the world of our practical lives and material experience, as the sky overarches the earth. It is in the spirit of science that we conquer and use the material world in which we live; it is in the spirit of art and literature, philosophy and religion, that we explore and draw upon the immaterial world of our own hearts and souls. Of course the man of science is also a philosopher—may I not even say he is also a prophet and poet? ”

“ There is no eloquence without heat, and no poetry without light. An earnest man is more or less an eloquent man. Eloquence belongs to the world of actual affairs and events; it is aroused by great wrongs and great dangers, it flourishes in the forum and the senate. Poetry is more private and personal, is more for the soul and the religious instincts; it courts solitude and wooes the ideal.
Anything swiftly told or described, the sense of speed and volume, is, or approaches, eloquence; while anything heightened and deepened, any meaning and beauty suddenly revealed, is, or approaches, poetry. ”

“ One of the most desirable things in life is a fresh impression of an old fact or scene. One's love of nature may be a constant factor, yet it is only now and then that he gets a fresh impression of the charm and meaning of nature; only now and then that the objects without and the mood within so fit together that we have a vivid and original sense of the beauty and significance that surround us. How often do we really see the stars? Probably a great many people never see them at all—that is, never look upon them with any thrill of emotion. ”

“ The bird at first seems a mere wandering voice in the air: one hears its call or carol on some bright March morning, but is uncertain of its source or direction; it falls like a drop of rain when no cloud is visible; one looks and listens, but to no purpose. The weather changes, perhaps a cold snap with snow comes on, and it may be a week before I hear the not again, and this time or the next perchance see this bird sitting on a stake in the fence lifting his wing as he calls cheerily to his mate. ”

“ A man reaches and moves you, not an artist. Doubtless, too, a certain withholding and repugnance has first to be overcome, analogous to a cold sea plunge; and it is not till you experience the reaction, the after-glow, and feel the swing and surge of the strong waves, that you know what Walt Whitman's pages really are. They don't give themselves at first,—like the real landscape and the sea, they are all indirections. You may have to try them many times; there is something of Nature's rudeness and forbiddingness, not only at the first, but probably always. ”

“ Gradually they began to drift over the street; a moment more, and they had become separated from the other bees, and, drawing together in a more compact mass or cloud, away they went, a humming, flying vortex of bees, the queen in the centre, and the swarm revolving around her as a pivot,—over meadows, across creeks and swamps, straight for the heart of the mountain, about a mile distant,—slow at first, so that the youth who gave chase kept up with them, but increasing their speed till only a fox hound could have kept them in sight. ”

“ The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons—for I sometimes made a day of it—like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the top of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in nature. ”

“ It is true the pomp and the pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,—the day and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. ”

“ What a fine talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name! But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste and intelligence that speak. When will he redeem all these promises, and become a fixed centre of thought and emotion in himself? To write poems is no distinction; to be a poem, to be a fixed point amid the seething chaos, a rock amid the currents, giving your own form and character to them,—that is something. ”

“ How beautiful is fertility! A landscape of fruitful and well-cultivated fields; an unbroken expanse of grass; a thick, uniform growth of grain—how each of these fills and satisfies the eye! And it is not because we are essentially utilitarian and see the rich loaf and the fat beef as the outcome of it all, but because we read in it an expression of the beneficence and good-will of the earth. We love to see harmony between man and nature; we love peace and not war; we love the adequate, the complete. A perfect issue of grass or grain is a satisfaction to look upon, because it is a success. ”

“ Can democracy, can the worth and picturesqueness of the people, furnish no worthy themes and motives for the poets? Can science, can the present day, can the religion of humanity, the conquest of nature’s forces, inspire no poetic enthusiasm and give rise to great art rivaling that of the past? As between the past and the present, undoubtedly the difficulty is not in the poverty of the material of to-day, but in the inadequacy of the man. It requires a great spirit, a powerful personality, to master and absorb the diverse and complex elements of our time and imbue them with poetic enthusiasm. ”

“ Once, Paumanok, When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month grass was growing, Up this seashore, in some briers, Two guests from Alabama—two together, And their nest, and four light green eggs, spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. Shine! Shine! Shine! Pour down your warmth, great Sun! While we bask—we two together. ”

“ Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the universe is directed to one man,—to you. His anthropomorphism is not a projection of himself into nature, but an absorption of nature in himself. ”