Henry David Thoreau

“ It is pleasant when summer is drawing to a close to hear the cricket piping a Niebelungenlied in the grass.
The feathered race are, perhaps, the truest heralds of the season, since they appreciate a thousand delicate changes in the atmosphere which is their own element, of which man cannot be aware. ”

“ For then Nature is never silent, and the chirp of crickets is incessant, but now the farthest and faintest sound takes possession of the vacuum. Even the barking of dogs and lowing of cattle is melodious. ”

“ Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step forth like knights encased in steel—to sport with the cutting air. Still through the drifts I see the farmer's early candle—like a paled star—emitting a lonely beam from the cottage indoors as, one by one, the sluggish smoke begins to ascend from the chimneys of the farm-houses midst the trees. Thus from each domestic altar does incense go up each morning to the heavens. Once the stars lose some of their sparkle and a deep blue mist skirts the eastern horizon, a lurid and brazen light foretells the approaching day. ”

“ The most familiar and best-known facts leave no distinct impression on our minds; no man can tell how his horizon looks at evening. We do not know, till the time comes, which way the river runs, which hills range, or that the hill takes in our homestead in its sweep. At first our birth and existence sunder all things, as if, like a wedge, we had been thrust up through into Nature, and not till the wound heals do we begin to see her unity.
Page xxvii.—The passage beginning, "Here the Woodcutters" has nothing to do with the preceding passage on Music, and should have been detached from it. ”

“ Page 83.—Continuing his remarks on Lovelace, Thoreau says:
Wednesday, April 11, 1843.
Poetry is a purer draught of life.
Thursday.—I am pleased with the manner in which Quarles and his contemporaries speak of Nature. The utmost poetry of their expression is after all a sort of gallantry—of a knight to his lady. They do not speak as sincere lovers of Nature or as very conversant with her; but as possessing a thorough respect for her, and a good title to her acquaintance. They can speak of, and to her, well and manfully because their lips are not closed by affection. ”

“ Dense flocks of bobolinks, russet and rustling like seeds of the meadow grass floating on the wind, or like ripe grain threshed out by the gale, rise before us in our walk. Each tuft gives up its bird. ”

“ The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who know and can do much less—is still an impure one: to be strictly just it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. ”

“ While the late-risen world goes west,
You daily bend my steps to east.
Mountains were always singularly attractive to Thoreau (see page xxiv) , as indeed they are to poets generally. The verses originally printed in The Dial on Mountains were begun in August, 1841, and then entitled To the Mountains. These unprinted lines seem to have been intended as a closing to the poem, although they appear in the original on a separate sheet (see facsimile of original MS.) , under the following heading ”

“ Page 104.—The following verses, with the prose accompanying them may be added under Love (see also bottom of page 106) :—
THE VIRGIN
With her calm, inquiring eyes
She doth tempt the earth to rise;
With humility over all,
She doth tempt the sky to fall.
In her place she still doth stand,
A pattern unto the firm land;
While revolving spheres come round
To embrace her stable ground.
Page 108.—The following poem continues the thought recorded on the 108th page, and connects it with page 109 ”

“ Who lingers in the purlieus of the towns
With unexplored grace and savage frowns.
August, 1841. [A little more than a year later, Thoreau wrote the following in his Journal, this fragment of which was rescued and preserved by the Thatcher family] :—
Saturday, October 15, 1842. ”