Henry David Thoreau

“ Now the hardhack and meadow-sweet reign, the former one of our handsomest flowers, I think. The mayweed, too, dusty by the roadside, and in the fields I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting, which is half expanded. The grass is withered by the drought. The potatoes begin generally to flat down. The corn is tasselled out; its crosses show in all fields above the blades. The turnips are growing in its midst.
As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadowsweet in a hedge, I heard the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense of autumn. ”

“ The robin sings now, though the moon shines silverly, and the veery jingles its trill. I hear the fresh and refreshing sound of falling water, as I have heard it in New Hampshire. It is a sound we do not commonly hear. I see that the whiteweed is in blossom, which, as I had not walked by day for some time, I had not seen before.
How moderate, deliberate, is Nature! How gradually the shades of night gather and deepen, giving man ample leisure to bid farewell to-day, conclude his day’s affairs, and prepare for slumber! The twilight seems out of proportion to the length of the day. ”

“ I walk over the hills, to compare great things with small, as through a gallery of pictures, ever and anon looking through a gap in the wood, as through the frame of a picture, to a more distant wood or hillside, painted with several more coats of air. It is a cheap but pleasant effect. To a landscape in picture, glassed with air.
What is a horizon without mountains?
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It has new life and motion. It is intermediate between land and sky. On land, only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. ”

“ I hear a horse sneeze (?) from time to time in his pasture. He sees me and knows me to be a man, though I do not see him. I hear the nine o’clock bell ringing in Bedford. An unexpectedly musical sound that of a bell in the horizon always is. Pleasantly sounds the voice of one village to another. It is sweet as it is rare. Since I sat here a bright star has gone behind the stem of a tree, proving that my machine is moving,—proving it better for me than a rotating pendulum. I hear a solitary whip-poor-will, and a bullfrog on the river,—fewer sounds than in spring. ”

“ Our feet must be imaginative, must know the earth in imagination only, as well as our heads. We sit on the fence, and, where it is broken and interrupted, the fallen and slanting rails are lost in the grass (really thin and wiry) as in water. We even see our tracks a long way behind, where we have brushed off the dew. The clouds are peculiarly wispy to-night, somewhat like fine flames, not massed and dark nor downy, not thick, but slight, thin wisps of mist.
I hear the sound of Heywood’s Brook falling into Fair Haven Pond, inexpressibly refreshing to my senses. ”

“ The song sparrow, the most familiar and New England bird, is heard in fields and pastures, setting this midsummer day to music, as if it were the music of a mossy rail or fence post; a little stream of song, cooling, rippling through the noon,—the usually unseen songster usually unheard like the cricket, it is so common,—like the poet’s song, unheard by most men, whose ears are stopped with business, though perchance it sang on the fence before the farmer’s house this morning for an hour. There are little strains of poetry in our animals. ”

“ The meadow-sweet has bloomed. These dry hills and pastures are the places to walk by moonlight. The moon is silvery still, not yet inaugurated. The tree-tops are seen against the amber west. I seem to see the outlines of one spruce among them, distinguishable afar. My thoughts expand and flourish most on this barren hill, where in the twilight I see the moss spreading in rings and prevailing over the short, thin grass, carpeting the earth, adding a few inches of green to its circle annually while it dies within.
As we round the sandy promontory, we try the sand and rocks with our hands. ”

“ Nightshade is in blossom. Came through the pine plains behind James Baker’s, where late was open pasture, now open pitch pine woods, only here and there the grass has given place to a carpet of pine-needles. These are among our pleasantest woods,—open, level, with blackberry vines interspersed and flowers, as lady’s-slippers, earlier, and pinks on the outskirts. Each tree has room enough. And now I hear the wood thrush from the shade, who loves these pine woods as well as I. I pass by Walden’s scalloped shore. The epilobium reflects a pink gleam up the vales and down the hills. ”

“ All distant landscapes seen from hilltops are veritable pictures, which will be found to have no actual existence to him who travels to them. “’T is distance lends enchantment to the view.” It is the bare landscape without this depth of atmosphere to glass it. The distant river-reach seen in the north from the Lincoln Hill, high in the horizon, like the ocean stream flowing round Homer’s shield, the rippling waves reflecting the light, is unlike the same seen near at hand. Heaven intervenes between me and the object. By what license do I call it Concord River. ”

“ I sit beside Hubbard’s Grove. A few level red bars above the horizon; 371 a dark, irregular bank beneath them, with a streak of red sky below, on the horizon’s edge. This will describe many a sunset. It is 8 o’clock. The farmer has driven in his cows, and is cutting an armful of green corn fodder for them. Another is still patching the roof of his barn, making his hammer heard afar in the twilight, as if he took a satisfaction in his elevated work,—sitting astride the ridge,—which he wished to prolong. The robin utters a sort of cackling note, as if he had learned the ways of man. ”

“ A sparrow or a cricket makes more noise. From Conant’s summit I hear as many as fifteen whip-poor-wills—or whip-or-I-wills—at once, the succeeding cluck sounding strangely foreign, like a hewer at work elsewhere.
The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumphing over the clouds, but still the west is suffused here and there with a slight red tinge, marking the path of the day. Though inexperienced ones might call it night, it is not yet. Dark, heavy clouds lie along the western horizon, exhibiting the forms of animals and men, while the moon is behind a cloud. ”

“ I feel my Maker blessing me. To the sane man the world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.
As I walk the railroad causeway, I notice that the fields and meadows have acquired various tinges as the season advances, the sun gradually using all his paints. There is the rosaceous evening red tinge of red clover,—like an evening sky gone down upon the grass,—the whiteweed tinge, the white clover tinge, which reminds me how sweet it smells. The tall buttercup stars the meadow on another side, telling of the wealth of dairies. ”

“ 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 harvest 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. ”

“ There must have been a thick web of cobwebs on the grass this morning, promising this fair day, for I see them still through the afternoon, covering not only the grass but the bushes and the trees. They are stretched across the unfrequented roads from weed to weed, and broken by the legs of the horses.
I thought to-day that it would be pleasing to study the dead and withered plants, the ghosts of plants, which now remain in the fields, for they fill almost as large a space to the eye as the green have done. They live not in memory only, but to the fancy and imagination. ”

“ Is there such virtue in raking cranberries that those men’s industry whom I now see on the meadow shall reprove my idleness? Can I not go over those same meadows after them, and rake still more valuable fruits? Can I not rake with my mind? Can I not rake a thought, perchance, which shall be worth a bushel of cranberries?
A certain refinement and civilization in nature which increases with the wildness. The civilization that consists with wildness, the light that is in night. A smile as in a dream on the face of the sleeping lake. ”

“ I transferred my shadow to the darkest patches of grass, and saw the halo there equally. It serves to make the outlines of the shadow more distinct.
But now for last night. A few fireflies in the meadow. Do they shine, though invisibly, by day? Is their candle lighted by day? It is not nightfall till the whip-poor-wills begin to sing.
As I entered the Deep Cut, I was affected by beholding the first faint reflection of genuine and unmixed moonlight on the eastern sand-bank while the horizon, yet red with day, was tingeing the western side. ”

“ I go to Flint’s Pond for the sake of the mountain view from the hill beyond, looking over Concord. I have thought it the best, especially in the winter, which I can get in this neighborhood. It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day. I have thus seen some earth which corresponds to my least earthly and trivial, to my most heavenward-looking, thoughts. The earth seen through an azure, an ethereal, veil. They are the natural temples, elevated brows, of the earth, looking at which, the thoughts of the beholder are naturally elevated and sublimed,—etherealized. ”

“ It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is. Fair Haven Lake in the south, with its pine-covered island and its meadows, the hickories putting out fresh young yellowish leaves, and the oaks light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums his sawyer-like strain, and the chewink rustles through the 10 dry leaves or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the wood thrush, the genius of the wood, whistles for the first time his clear and thrilling strain,—it sounds as it did the first time I heard it. ”

“ His occasional rejuvenescence and faith in the current time is like the aftermath, a scanty crop. The enterprise which he has not already undertaken cannot be undertaken this year. The period of youth is past. The year may be in its summer, in its manhood, but it is no longer in the flower of its age. It is a season of withering, of dust and heat, a season of small fruits and trivial experiences. Summer thus answers to manhood. But there is an aftermath in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom again, followed by an Indian summer of finer atmosphere and of a pensive beauty. ”

“ It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination. When we were dead and dry as the highway, some sense which has been healthily fed will put us in relation with Nature, in sympathy with her; some grains of fertilizing pollen, floating in the air, fall on us, and suddenly the sky is all one rainbow, is full of music and fragrance and flavor. The man of intellect only, the prosaic man, is a barren, 414 staminiferous flower; the poet is a fertile and perfect flower. ”

“ The whip-poor-wills sing.
Cultivate reverence. It is as if you were so much more respectable yourself. By the quality of a man’s writing, by the elevation of its tone, you may measure his self-respect. How shall a man continue his culture after manhood?
Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs. A sheeny lake in the midst of a boundless forest, the 464 windy surf sounding freshly and wildly in the single pine behind you; the silence of hushed wolves in the wilderness, and, as you fancy, moose looking off from the shore of the lake. ”

“ 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 partridge still bursts away. The silent, dry, almost leafless, 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! ”

“ We wade through the luxuriant vegetation, seeing no bottom. Looking back toward the Cliffs, some dead trees in the horizon, high on the rocks, make a wild New Hampshire prospect. There is the faintest possible mist over the pond-holes, where the frogs are eructating, like the falling of huge drops, the bursting of mephitic air-bubbles rising from 300 the bottom, a sort of blubbering,—such conversation as I have heard between men, a belching conversation, expressing a sympathy of stomachs and abdomens. The peculiar appearance of the indigo-weed, its misty massiveness, is striking. ”

“ There is something creative and primal in the cool mist. This dewy mist does not fail to suggest music to me, unaccountably; fertility, the origin of things. An atmosphere which has forgotten the sun, where the ancient principle of moisture prevails. It is laden with the condensed fragrance of plants and, as it were, distilled in dews.
The woodland paths are never seen to such advantage as in a moonlight night, so embowered, still opening before you almost against expectation as you walk; you are so completely in the woods, and yet your feet meet no obstacles. ”

“ There are few sounds but the slight twittering of swallows, and the springy note of the sparrow in the grass or trees, and a lark in the meadow (now at 8 a. m.) , and the cricket under all to ally the hour to night. Day is, in fact, about as still as night. Draw the veil of night over this landscape, and these sounds would not disturb nor be inconsistent for their loudness with the night. It is a difference of white and black. Nature is in a white sleep. It threatens to be a hot day, and the haymakers are whetting their scythes in the fields, where they have been out since 4 o’clock. ”