The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume VII (of 20)

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Title: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume VII (of 20) - Journal I, 1837-1846
Author: Thoreau, Henry David
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

The following alternate spellings were noted, but retained:

contemporaries and cotemporaries
Bramins and Brahmins
Shakspeare and Shakespeare
Sanskrit and Sanscrit
Catskills and Caatskills

THE WRITINGS OF
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

IN TWENTY VOLUMES

VOLUME VII

MANUSCRIPT EDITION

LIMITED TO SIX HUNDRED COPIES

NUMBER ----

[Illustration: _White Violets_ (_page 304_)]

[Illustration: _View from Annursnack Hill_]

THE WRITINGS OF
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

JOURNAL

EDITED BY BRADFORD TORREY

I
1837-1846

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
MDCCCCVI

_All rights reserved_

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

Aside from the use Thoreau himself made of his Journal in writing his
more formal works, the first extensive publication of the Journal
material began in 1881 with "Early Spring in Massachusetts." This
volume consisted of extracts covering the month of March and parts
of February and April, arranged according to the days of the month,
the entries for the successive years following one another under each
day. It was edited by Thoreau's friend Mr. H. G. O. Blake, to whom the
Journal was bequeathed by Miss Sophia Thoreau, who died in 1876. It
was succeeded in 1884 by a volume entitled "Summer," which in reality
covered only the early summer, and that, in turn, by "Winter" in 1887
and "Autumn" in 1892, all made by Mr. Blake on the same principle.
These volumes, from the first to the last, were received with delight
by the ever-increasing body of Thoreau's admirers, but they have served
to whet rather than satisfy the appetite of readers, and it has long
been evident that they ought not to stand alone as representing this
important phase of Thoreau's activity. The publishers therefore gladly
seized the opportunity afforded, when the Journal, on the death of
Mr. Blake, passed into the hands of Mr. E. H. Russell of Worcester,
who was desirous of giving it to the public in its entirety, and they
at once made arrangements with him to bring it out in extenso as soon
as the long labor of copying and comparing the manuscripts could be
completed. As editor the publishers have been so fortunate as to secure
Mr. Bradford Torrey, who is eminently qualified to consider Thoreau both
as a writer and as an observer of nature.

EDITOR'S PREFACE

Concerning this first practically complete printing of Thoreau's Journal
it seems proper to make the following explanations, in addition to those
contained in the Publishers' Note:—

1. It has been found necessary, if the Journal was to be of comfortable
use by ordinary readers, to punctuate it throughout. Otherwise each
reader would have been compelled to do the work for himself. A literal
reproduction, like the literal reproduction of Milton's minor poems,
for example, may some day be of interest to antiquaries and special
students; but such an edition could never be adapted, more than the
literal reproduction of Milton's manuscripts, to the needs of those who
read for pleasure and general profit.

2. Certain things have been omitted; _i. e._, incomplete sentences,
where parts of pages have been torn out by the writer; long quotations,
especially from Latin authors, entered without comment, as in a
commonplace-book; Maine woods matter—"Chesuncook" and "The Allegash and
East Branch"—already printed _in extenso_ in the volume entitled "The
Maine Woods;" a few long lists of plants, etc., recapitulating matter
contained in the preceding pages; the word _ultimo_, or _ult._, which
in hundreds of instances is written where the context makes it plain
that _instant_ was the word intended; a proper name here and there,
out of regard for the feelings of possible relatives or descendants
of the persons mentioned; guesses at the identification of particular
plants,—willows, goldenrods, and the like,—often accompanied by
tediously minute technical descriptions, the whole evidently meant as
mere memoranda for the writer's possible future guidance, and believed
to be of no interest now, even to the botanical reader.

3. In the case of passages which Thoreau had revised, mostly in pencil,
the editor has commonly printed the original form when the amended one
has been followed in already printed volumes. In other cases the amended
version has been given. Corrections of error have always been allowed to
stand, except that, where it is plain that the correction must have been
made at a date later than that of the original entry, the correction
has been printed as a footnote, without brackets.

4. The footnotes of the editor are always in brackets.

5. Where parts of the Journal have been printed in the author's books,
the editor and his associate, as far as their knowledge has gone, have
indicated the fact, citing first the present and then the Riverside
edition,—thus: "_Week_, p. 305; Riv. 379." References to "Channing"
are to "Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist," by William Ellery Channing, new
edition, edited by Mr. F. B. Sanborn. References to "Sanborn" are to
"Henry D. Thoreau," by F. B. Sanborn, in the American Men of Letters.

6. The earlier manuscript volumes of the Journal, as we now have them,
are evidently not the originals, but are made up of selections from
volumes that appear to have been destroyed by the author.

It remains only to add the editor's very hearty acknowledgements to
his associate, Mr. Francis H. Allen, who has overseen and verified the
copying of the manuscript, an onerous task, and in every way, by counsel
and labor, has facilitated, not to say made possible, the completion of
the work.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION xix

CHAPTER I. 1837 (ÆT. 20) 3

Opening of the Journal—Quotations from Goethe—Ducks
at Goose Pond—The Arrowhead—With and Against
the Stream—Discipline—Sunrise—Harmony—The World
from a Hilltop—Hoar Frost—Measure—Thorns—Jack
Frost—Druids—Immortality Post—The Saxons—Crystals
—Revolutions—Heroes—The Interesting Facts in History.

CHAPTER II. 1838 (ÆT. 20-21) 25

The Saxons—Hoar Frost—Zeno, the Stoic—Small Talk—Old
Books—Greece—Goethe—Homer—A Sunday Scene—What
to Do—Composition—Scraps from a Lecture on
Society—The Indian Axe—Friendship—Conversation—The
Bluebirds—Journey to Maine—May Morning—Walden—Cliffs
—Heroism—Divine Service—The Sabbath Bell—Holy War—The
Loss of a Tooth—Deformity—Crickets—Sphere Music—Alma
Natura—Compensation—My Boots—Speculation—Byron—Fair
Haven—Scraps from an Essay on Sound and
Silence—Anacreon's Ode to the Cicada—Anacreontics.

CHAPTER III. 1839 (ÆT. 21-22) 71

The Thaw—The Dream Valley—Love—The Evening
Wind—The Peal of the Bells—The Shrike—Morning—The
Teamster—Fat Pine for Spearing—Terra Firma in
Society—The Kingdoms of the Earth—The Form of
Strength—My Attic—Sympathy—Annursnack—The Assabet—The
Breeze's Invitation—The Week on the Concord and
Merrimack—The Walk to the White Mountains—The Wise
Rest—Æschylus—Growth—Despondency—Linnæus—Bravery—Noon
—Scraps from a Chapter on Bravery—Friendship—Crickets.

CHAPTER IV. 1840 (ÆT. 22-23) 110

The Fisher's Son—Friends—Poetry—A Tame
Life—Æschylus—Truth—Duty—Beauty lives by
Rhymes—Fishes—Muskrats—The Freshet—Important
Events—Ornithology—Inward Poverty—Wild Ducks—The
World as a Theatre for Action—Rain—Farewell,
Etiquette!—War—The Beginning of the Voyage on
the Concord and Merrimack—The Boat—End of the
Journal of 546 Pages—Reflections—A Sonnet to
Profane Swearing—Down the Concord—The Landscape
through a Tumbler—Likeness and Difference—A Drum
in the Night—The Inspired Body—Dullness—The
Yankee Answer—Greek Philosophers—Rhythm and
Harmony—Evening—Paradox—Sailing—A Stately
March—Effort the Prerogative of Virtue—The True
Poem—Sunrise—A Muster—The Great Ball—Fishing and
Sporting—The Golden Mean—Grecian History—The Eye—True
Art—Necessity—Dress—Bravery.

CHAPTER V. 1841 (ÆT. 23-24) 173

Routine—Stillness—Seriousness cutting Capers—Wealth
is Power—A Dream—Suspicion—Resistance—Rough
Usage—Trust in God—Journalizing—The Snow on the
Pitch Pines—A Team coming out of the Woods—The
Tracks of a Fox—Chasing a Fox—End of the Journal
of 396 Pages—Repetition—Weight—Sincerity—The
Etiquette of Keeping One's Seat—The Human
Voice—Swiss Singers—Costume—The Value of the
Recess in a Public Entertainment—Assisting
Nature—Prophecy—The Geniality of Cold—Recognition of
Greatness—Victory and Defeat—The Lover's Court—The
Measure of Time—My Journal—The Industriousness of
Vice—Overpraising—Silence—True Modesty—The Helper and
the Helped—A Poor Farm—Bronchitis—A Good Book—The
Leisure of Society and Nature—The Grandeur of the
Storm—Music—Friends—The Care of the Body—The Best
Medicine—Life—Diversion and Amusement—Composition—The
Sound of a Horn—Boarding—Thoroughfares of
Vice—Reproof—An Interpretation of Emerson's
"Sphinx"—Homeliness in Books—Aubrey—The Loneliness
of our Life—Seriousness—Magnanimity—Moral
Reflections in a Work on Agriculture—Tea-Kettle and
Cow-Bell—Plowing—Eclipsing Napoleon's Career—The True
Reformer—Seeing—Friendship's Steadfastness—The Gods
side with no Man—A Profane Expression—The Silence of
the Woods—The Civilization of the Woods—The Oppression
of the House—Shoulders—Approaching a Great Nature—The
Use of a Cane—Wachusett—Navigation—The Pine—Westward
Ho!—The Echo of the Sabbath Bell heard in the
Woods—Books—The Laws of Menu—A Vermonter—The Moon
through a Telescope—Immemorial Custom—An Unchangeable
Morning Light—The Book of the Hindoos—History and
Biography—The Form of a Mountain—Art and Nature—The
Strains of a Flute—Earnestness—Afternoon—Various
Sounds of the Crickets—The Work of Genius—The
Idea of Man in the Hindoo Scripture—The Hindoo's
Conception of Creation—Taste and Poetry—The Austerity
of the Hindoos—The Only Obligation—Seines in the
River—Moonlight the Best Restorer of Antiquity—A
Poem to be called "Concord"—A Boat floating amid
Reflections—Poetry—Directions for setting out Peach
Trees and Grape-Vines—Experience at the Harvard
Library—The English Poets—Saxon Poetry—Character—The
Inward Morning—Music and Character—The Form
of the Wind—Ancient Scotch Poetry—My Redeeming
Qualities—The Smoke from an Invisible Farmhouse—Latent
Eloquence—Ghosts—Sacred Forests—Thoughts of a
Life at Walden—The Rich Man—The Trade of Life—True
Greatness—Chaucer—Snowflakes—Books of Natural History.

CHAPTER VI. 1842 (ÆT. 24-25) 308

Good Courage—The Church the Hospital for Men's
Souls—Chaucer—Popped Corn—The Literary Style of the
Laboring Man—Sir Walter Raleigh—Calmness—The Perfume
of the Earth—Unhealthiness of Morality—Music from a
Music-Box—Raleigh's Faults—Man's Puny Fences—The Death
of Friends—Chaucer the Poet of Gardens—Character and
Genius—The History of Music—Chaucer's Way of Speaking
of God—My Life—Dying a Transient Phenomenon—The
Memory of Departed Friends—The Game of Love—A New
Day—The Eye—Originality of Nature—Raleigh—The
Most Attractive Sentences—Law and the Right—An
Old Schoolmate—Carlyle's Writing—The Tracks of the
Indian—The Stars and Man—Friendship—The Roominess
of Nature—The Exuberance of Plain Speech—Action and
Reflection—Common Sense in Very Old Books—Thoughts
like Mountains—Insufficiency of Wisdom without
Love—I am Time and the World—My Errand to Mankind—Two
Little Hawks and a Great One—Flow in Books—Nature's
Leniency toward the Vicious—Intercourse—A Fish
Hawk—Poetry—Lydgate's "Story of Thebes"—Humor—Man's
Destiny—The Economy of Nature.

CHAPTER VII. 1845-1846 (ÆT. 27-29) 361

The Beginning of the Life at Walden—A House in
the Catskills—The Vital Facts of Life—Relics
of the Indians—Auxiliaries and Enemies of the
Bean-Field—Therien, the Canadian Woodchopper—A
Visit from Railroad Men—Life of Primitive Man—Wild
Mice—The Written and the Spoken Language—The Interest
and Importance of the Classics—The Fragrance
of an Apple—The Race of Man—The Mansions of the
Air—Echo—"The Crescent and the Cross"—Carnac—The
Heroic Books—Screech Owls—Bullfrogs—Nature and
Art—Childhood Memories of Walden Pond—Truth—John
Field, a Shiftless Irishman, and his Family—A
Hard and Emphatic Life—Language—Plastering the
House—Primitive Houses—The Cost of a House—The
Romans and Nature—Jehovah and Jupiter—Some Greek
Myths—Difficulty of Getting a Living and Keeping out
of Debt—The Fox as an Imperfect Man—Reading suggested
by Hallam's History of Literature—The Necessaries
of Life—A Dog Lost—Therien and the Chickadees—The
Evening Robin—The Earth as a Garden—A Flock of Geese.

CHAPTER VIII. 1845-1847 (ÆT. 27-30) 403

The Hero—At Midnight's Hour—Wordsworth—Dying Young—The
Present Time—Exaggeration—Carlyle's Discovery that
he was not a Jackass—Longevity—Life and Death of Hugh
Quoil, a Waterloo Soldier—Quoil's Deserted House—Old
Clothes—Former Inhabitants of the Walden Woods—The
Loon on Walden Pond—Ducks and Geese—The Pack of
Hounds—An Unsuccessful Village—Concord Games—Animal
Neighbors—Carlyle's Use of the Printer's Art—Northern
Slavery—Brister and Zilpha—Making Bread—Emerson and
Alcott—A Rabbit—A Town Officer.

CHAPTER IX. 1837-1847 (ÆT. 20-30) 438

Friends—The Loading and Launching of the
Boat—Gracefulness—On the Merrimack—The Era
of the Indian—Fate of the Indian—Criticism's
Apology—Life—Suspicion—The Purple Finch—Gower's
Poetry—Light—Indian Implements—Success in Proportion
to Average Ability—Kindness—Fog—The Attitude of
Quarles and his Contemporaries towards Nature—The
Mystery of Life—Three-o'clock-in-the-Morning Courage—A
Recent Book—Museums—Some Old English Poets—Our
Kindred—Friendship—Skating after a Fox—To a Marsh Hawk
in the Spring—The Gardener—A Fisherman's Account at
the Store—Finny Contemporaries—Marlowe—Thaw—Modern
Nymphs—Living by Self-Defense—The Survival of
the Birds—The Slaughter-House—The Tragedy of the
Muskrat—Carlyle not to be Studied—The Subject of the
Lecture—The Character of our Life—The Sovereignty
of the Mind—Coöperation.

ILLUSTRATIONS

WHITE VIOLETS, Carbon photograph (page 304) Frontispiece

VIEW FROM ANNURSNACK HILL Colored plate

HENRY DAVID THOREAU IN 1854, FROM THE
ROWSE CRAYON IN THE CONCORD PUBLIC
LIBRARY 1

FROST CRYSTALS AT THE MOUTH OF A HOLE
IN A BANK 22

VIEW FROM ANNURSNACK HILL 84

TREES REFLECTED IN THE RIVER 140

WINTER LANDSCAPE FROM FAIRHAVEN HILL 296

INTRODUCTION

Thoreau was a man of his own kind. Many things may be said of him,
favorable and unfavorable, but this must surely be said first,—that,
taken for all in all, he was like nobody else. Taken for all in all,
be it remarked. Other men have despised common sense; other men have
chosen to be poor, and, as between physical comfort and better things,
have made light of physical comfort; other men, whether to their credit
or discredit, have held and expressed a contemptuous opinion of their
neighbors and all their neighbors' doings; others, a smaller number,
believing in an absolute goodness and in a wisdom transcending human
knowledge, have distrusted the world as evil, accounting its influence
degrading, its prudence no better than cowardice, its wisdom a kind
of folly, its morality a compromise, its religion a bargain, its
possessions a defilement and a hindrance, and so judging of the world,
have striven at all cost to live above it and apart. And some, no doubt,
have loved Nature as a mistress, fleeing to her from less congenial
company, and devoting a lifetime to the observation and enjoyment of her
ways. In no one of these particulars was the hermit of Walden without
forerunners; but taken for all that he was, poet, idealist, stoic,
cynic, naturalist, spiritualist, lover of purity, seeker of perfection,
panegyrist of friendship and dweller in a hermitage, freethinker and
saint, where shall we look to find his fellow? It seems but the plainest
statement of fact to say that, as there was none before him, so there
is scanty prospect of any to come after him.

His profession was literature; as to that there is no sign that he was
ever in doubt; and he understood from the first that for a writing man
nothing could take the place of practice, partly because that is the one
means of acquiring ease of expression, and partly because a man often
has no suspicion of his own thoughts until his pen discovers them; and
almost from the first—a friend (Emerson or another) having given him
the hint—he had come to feel that no practice is better or readier than
the keeping of a journal, a daily record of things thought, seen, and
felt. Such a record he began soon after leaving college, and (being
one of a thousand in this respect as in others) he continued it to the
end. By good fortune he left it behind him, and, to complete the good
fortune, it is at last printed, no longer in selections, but as a whole;
and if a man is curious to know what such an original, plain-spoken,
perfection-seeking, convention-despising, dogma-disbelieving,
wisdom-loving, sham-hating, Nature-worshipping, poverty-proud genius
was in the habit of confiding to so patient a listener at the close of
the day, he has only to read the book.

The man himself is there. Something of him, indeed, is to be discovered,
one half imagines, in the outward aspect of the thirty-nine manuscript
volumes: ordinary "blank-books" of the sort furnished by country
shopkeepers fifty or sixty years ago, larger or smaller as might
happen, and of varying shapes (a customer seeking such wares must not
be too particular; one remembers Thoreau's complaint that the universal
preoccupation with questions of money rendered it difficult for him
to find a blank-book that was not ruled for dollars and cents), still
neatly packed in the strong wooden box which their owner, a workman
needing not to be ashamed, made with his own hands on purpose to hold
them.

A pretty full result of a short life they seem to be, as one takes up
volume after volume (the largest are found to contain about a hundred
thousand words) and turns the leaves: the handwriting strong and rapid,
leaning well forward in its haste, none too legible, slow reading at
the best, with here and there a word that is almost past making out;
the orthography that of a naturally good speller setting down his
thoughts at full speed and leaving his mistakes behind him; and the
punctuation, to call it such, no better than a makeshift,—after the
model of Sterne's, if one chooses to say so: a spattering of dashes,
and little else.[1]

As for the matter, it is more carefully considered, less strictly
improvised, than is customary with diarists. It is evident, in fact,
from references here and there, that many of the entries were copied
from an earlier pencilled draft, made presumably in the field, "with
the eye on the object," while the work as a whole has been more or less
carefully revised, with erasures, emendations, and suggested alternative
readings.

As we have said, if a man wishes to know Thoreau as he was, let him
read the book. One thing he may be sure of: he will find himself in
clean, self-respecting company, with no call to blush, as if he were
playing the eavesdropper. Of confessions, indeed, in the spicy sense of
the word, Thoreau had none to make. He was no Montaigne, no Rousseau,
no Samuel Pepys. How should he be? He was a Puritan of Massachusetts,
though he kept no Sabbath, was seen in no church,—being very different
from Mr. Pepys in more ways than one,—and esteemed the Hebrew scriptures
as a good book like any other. Once, indeed, when he was thirty-four
years old, he went to a "party." For anything we know, that (with a
little sowing of wild oats in the matter of smoking dried lily-stems
when a boy) was as near as he ever came to dissipation. And he did
not like it. "It is a bad place to go to," he says,—"thirty or forty
persons, mostly young women, in a small room, warm and noisy." One of
the young women was reputed to be "pretty-looking;" but he scarcely
looked at her, though he was "introduced," and he could not hear what
she said, because there was "such a clacking." "I could imagine better
places for conversation," he goes on, "where there should be a certain
degree of silence surrounding you, and less than forty talking at once.
Why, this afternoon, even, I did better. There was old Mr. Joseph Hosmer
and I ate our luncheon of cracker and cheese together in the woods. I
heard all he said, though it was not much, to be sure, and he could hear
me. And then he talked out of such a glorious repose, taking a leisurely
bite at the cracker and cheese between his words; and so some of him
was communicated to me, and some of me to him, I trust."

He entertains a shrewd suspicion that assemblies of this kind are got
up with a view to matrimonial alliances among the young people! For
his part, at all events, he doesn't understand "the use of going to
see people whom yet you never see, and who never see you." Some of
his friends make a singular blunder. They go out of their way to talk
to pretty young women _as such_. Their prettiness may be a reason
for looking at them, so much he will concede,—for the sake of the
antithesis, if for nothing else,—but why is it any reason for talking to
them? For himself, though he may be "lacking a sense in this respect,"
he derives "no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour
simply because she has regular features."

How crabbed is divine philosophy! After this we are not surprised
when he concludes by saying: "The society of young women is the most
unprofitable I have ever tried." No, no; he was nothing like Mr. Samuel
Pepys.

The sect of young women, we may add, need not feel deeply affronted by
this ungallant mention. It is perhaps the only one of its kind in the
journal (by its nature restricted to matters interesting to the author),
while there are multitudes of passages to prove that Thoreau's aversion
to the society of older people taken as they run, men and women alike,
was hardly less pronounced. In truth (and it is nothing of necessity
against him), he was not made for "parties," nor for clubs, nor even for
general companionship. "I am all without and in sight," said Montaigne,
"born for society and friendship." So was not Thoreau. He was all
within, born for contemplation and solitude. And what we are born for,
that let us be,—and so the will of God be done. Such, for good or ill,
was Thoreau's philosophy. "We are constantly invited to be what we are,"
he said. It is one of his memorable sentences; an admirable summary of
Emerson's essay on Self-Reliance.

His fellow mortals, as a rule, did not recommend themselves to him. His
thoughts were none the better for their company, as they almost always
were for the company of the pine tree and the meadow. Inspiration, a
refreshing of the spiritual faculties, as indispensable to him as daily
bread, that his fellow mortals did not furnish him. For this state of
things he sometimes (once or twice at least) mildly reproaches himself.
It may be that he is to blame for so commonly skipping humanity and its
affairs; he will seek to amend the fault, he promises. But even at such
a moment of exceptional humility, his pen, reversing Balaam's rôle,
runs into left-handed compliments that are worse, if anything, than
the original offense. Hear him: "I will not avoid to go by where those
men are repairing the stone bridge. I will see if I cannot see poetry
in that, if that will not yield me a reflection. It is narrow to be
confined to woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only.... Why
not see men standing in the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees?...
I will try to enjoy them as animals, at least."

This is in 1851. A year afterward we find him concerned with the same
theme, but in a less hesitating mood. Now he is on his high horse,
with apologies to nobody. "It appears to me," he begins, "that to one
standing on the heights of philosophy mankind and the works of man will
have sunk out of sight altogether." Man, in his opinion, is "too much
insisted upon. The poet says, 'The proper study of mankind is man.'
I say, Study to forget all that. Take wider views of the universe....
What is the village, city, state, nation, aye, the civilized world, that
it should concern a man so much? The thought of them affects me, in my
wisest hours, as when I pass a woodchuck's hole."

A high horse, indeed! But his comparison is really by no means so
disparaging as it sounds; for Thoreau took a deep and lasting interest
in woodchucks. At one time and another he wrote many good pages about
them; for their reappearance in the spring he watched as for the return
of a friend, and once, at least, he devoted an hour to digging out a
burrow and recording with painstaking minuteness the course and length
of its ramifications. A novelist, describing his heroine's boudoir,
could hardly have been more strict with himself. In fact, to have
said that one of Thoreau's human neighbors was as interesting to him
as a woodchuck would have been to pay that neighbor a rather handsome
compliment. None of the brute animals, so called,—we have it on his own
authority,—ever vexed his ears with pomposity or nonsense.

But we have interrupted his discourse midway. "I do not value any view
of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very
largely," he continues.... "Man is a past phenomenon to philosophy."
Then he descends a little to particulars. "Some rarely go outdoors,
most are always at home at night,"—Concord people being uncommonly well
brought up, it would appear,—"very few indeed have stayed out all night
once in their lives; fewer still have gone behind the world of humanity
and seen its institutions like toadstools by the wayside."

And then, having, with this good bit of philosophical "tall talk,"
brushed aside humanity as a very little thing, he proceeds to chronicle
the really essential facts of the day: that he landed that afternoon on
Tall's Island, and to his disappointment found the weather not cold or
windy enough for the meadow to make "its most serious impression;" also,
that the staddles from which the hay had been removed were found to
stand a foot or two above the water; besides which, he saw cranberries
on the bottom (although he forgot to mention them in their proper
place), and noticed that the steam of the engine looked very white that
morning against the hillside.

All which setting of ordinary valuations topsy-turvy, the lords of
creation below the beasts that perish, may lead an innocent reader to
exclaim with one of old, "Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of
him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

Nevertheless, we must not treat the matter too lightly, easily as it
lends itself to persiflage. Even in this extreme instance it is not to
be assumed that Thoreau was talking for the sake of talking, or merely
keeping his hand in with his favorite rhetorical weapon, a paradox.
That desiderated "serious impression," at all events, was no laughing
matter; rather it was to have been the chief event of the day; of more
account to Thoreau than dinner and supper both were likely to be to his
farmer neighbor. As for the woodchuck, its comparative rank in the scale
of animal existence, be it higher or lower, is nothing to the purpose.
For Thoreau it was simple truth that, on some days, and in some states
of mind, he found the society of such a cave-dweller more acceptable,
or less unacceptable, than that of any number of his highly civilized
townsmen. Nor is the statement one to be nervously concerned about.
Any inveterate stroller, the most matter-of-fact man alive (though
matter-of-fact men are not apt to be strollers), might say the same, in
all soberness, with no thought of writing himself down a misanthrope,
or of setting himself up as a philosopher.

For one thing, the woodchuck is sure to be less intrusive, less
distracting, than the ordinary human specimen; he fits in better with
solitude and the solitary feeling. He is never in the way. Moreover,
you can say to a woodchuck anything that comes into your head, without
fear of giving offense; a less important consideration than the other,
no doubt, woodchucks as a class not being remarkably conversable, but
still worthy of mention. For, naturally enough, an outspoken freethinker
like Thoreau found the greater number of men not so very different from
"ministers," of whom he said, in a tone of innocent surprise, that they
"could not bear all kinds of opinions,"—"as if any sincere thought were
not the best sort of truth!"

He walked one afternoon with Alcott, and spent an agreeable hour, though
for the most part he preferred having the woods and fields to himself.
Alcott was an ineffectual genius, he remarks, "forever feeling about
vainly in his speech, and touching nothing" (one thinks of Arnold's
characterization of Shelley as a "beautiful and ineffectual angel,
beating in the void his luminous wings in vain," which, in its turn,
may call to mind Lowell's comparison of Shelley's genius to a St. Elmo's
fire, "playing in ineffectual flame about the points of his thought"),
but after all, he was good company; not quite so good as none, of
course, but on the whole, as men go, rather better than most. At least,
he would listen to what you had to offer. He was open-minded; he wasn't
shut up in a creed; an honest man's thought would not shock him. You
could talk to him without running up against "some institution." In a
word,—though Thoreau doesn't say it,—he was something like a woodchuck.

With all his passion for "that glorious society called solitude," and
with all his feeling that mankind, as a "past phenomenon," thought
far too highly of itself, it is abundantly in evidence that Thoreau,
in his own time and on his own terms, was capable of a really human
delight in familiar intercourse with his fellows. Channing, who should
have known, speaks, a little vaguely, to be sure, of his "fine social
qualities." "Always a genial and hospitable entertainer," he calls him.
And Mr. Ricketson, who also should have known, assures us that "no man
could hold a finer relationship with his family than he." But of this
aspect of his character, it must be acknowledged, there is comparatively
little in the journal. What is very constant and emphatic there—emphatic
sometimes to the point of painfulness—is the hermit's hunger and thirst
after friendship; a friendship the sweets of which, so far as appears,
he was very sparingly to enjoy. For if he was at home in the family
group and in huckleberry excursions with children, if he relished to
the full a talk with a stray fisherman, a racy-tongued woodchopper, or
a good Indian, something very different seems to have been habitual with
him when it came to intercourse with equals and friends.

Here, even more than elsewhere, he was an uncompromising idealist. His
craving was for a friendship more than human, friendship such as it was
beyond any one about him to furnish, if it was not, as may fairly be
suspected, beyond his own capacity to receive. In respect to outward
things, his wealth, he truly said, was to want little. In respect to
friendship, his poverty was to want the unattainable. It might have
been retorted upon him in his own words, that he was like a man who
should complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy himself
a crown. But the retort would perhaps have been rather smart than
fair. He, at least, would never have acquiesced in it. He confided to
his journal again and again that he asked nothing of his friends but
honesty, sincerity, a grain of real appreciation, "an opportunity once
in a year to speak the truth;" but in the end it came always to this,
that he insisted upon perfection, and, not finding it, went on his way
hungry. Probably it is true—one seems to divine a reason for it—that
idealists, claimers of the absolute, have commonly found their fellow
men a disappointment.

In Thoreau's case it was his best friends who most severely tried his
patience. They invite him to see them, he complains, and then "do not
show themselves." He "pines and starves near them." All is useless. They
treat him so that he "feels a thousand miles off." "I leave my friends
early. I go away to cherish my idea of friendship." Surely there is no
sentence in all Thoreau's books that is more thoroughly characteristic
than that. And how neatly it is turned! Listen also to this, which is
equally bitter, and almost equally perfect in the phrasing: "No fields
are so barren to me as the men of whom I expect everything, but get
nothing. In their neighborhood I experience a painful yearning for
society."

It is all a mystery to him. "How happens it," he exclaims, "that I
find myself making such an enormous demand on men, and so constantly
disappointed? Are my friends aware how disappointed I am? Is it all my
fault? Am I incapable of expansion and generosity? I shall accuse myself
of anything else sooner." And again he goes away sorrowful, consoling
himself, as best he can, with his own paradox,—

"I might have loved him, had I loved him less."

Strange that he should have suffered in this way, many will think,
with Emerson himself for a friend and neighbor! Well, the two men were
friends, but neither was in this relation quite impeccable (which is
as much as to say that both were human), and to judge by such hints
as are gatherable on either side, their case was not entirely unlike
that of Bridget Elia and her cousin,—"generally in harmony, with
occasional bickerings, as it should be among near relations;" though
"bickerings" is no doubt an undignified term for use in this connection.
It is interesting, some may deem it amusing, to put side by side the
statements of the two men upon this very point; Emerson's communicated
to the public shortly after his friend's death, Thoreau's intrusted nine
years before to the privacy of his journal.

Emerson's speech is the more guarded, as, for more reasons than one, it
might have been expected to be. His friend, he confesses, "was somewhat
military in his nature ... always manly and able, but rarely tender, as
if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy
to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of
victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise....
It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to
controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily
thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social
affections; and though the companion would in the end acquit him of any
malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence no equal companion
stood in affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless."

Thoreau's entry is dated May 24, 1853. "Talked, or tried to talk, with
R. W. E. Lost my time, nay, almost my identity. He, assuming a false
opposition where there was no difference of opinion, talked to the
wind, told me what I knew, and I lost my time trying to imagine myself
somebody else to oppose him."

It is the very same picture, drawn by another pencil, with a different
placing of the shadows; and since the two sketches were made so many
years apart and yet seem to be descriptive of the same thing, it is
perhaps fair to conclude that this particular interview, which appears
to have degenerated into something like a dispute about nothing (a
very frequent subject of disputes, by the way), was not exceptional,
but rather typical. Without doubt this was one of the occasions when
Thoreau felt himself treated as if he were "a thousand miles off," and
went home early to "cherish his idea of friendship." Let us hope that
he lost nothing else along with his time and identity.

But here, again, we are in danger of an unseasonable lightness.
Friendship, according to Thoreau's apprehension of it, was a thing
infinitely sacred. A _friend_ might move him to petulance, as the best
of friends sometimes will; but _friendship_, the ideal state shown to
him in dreams, for speech concerning that there was nowhere in English,
nor anywhere else, a word sufficiently noble and unsoiled. And even
his friends he loved, although, tongue-tied New-Englander that he was,
he could never tell them so. He loved them best (and this, likewise,
was no singularity) when they were farthest away. In company, even in
their company, he could never utter his truest thought. So it is with us
all. It was a greater than Thoreau who said, "We descend to meet;" and
a greater still, perhaps (and he also a Concord man), who confessed at
fifty odd: "I doubt whether I have ever really talked with half a dozen
persons in my life."

As for Thoreau, he knew at times, and owned as much to himself, that
his absorption in nature tended to unfit him for human society. But so
it was; he loved to be alone. And in this respect he had no thought of
change,—no thought nor wish. Whatever happened, he would still belong
to no club but the true "country club," which dined "at the sign of
the Shrub Oak." The fields and the woods, the old road, the river, and
the pond, these were his real neighbors. Year in and year out, how near
they were to him!—a nearness unspeakable; till sometimes it seemed as if
their being and his were not two, but one and the same. With them was no
frivolity, no vulgarity, no changeableness, no prejudice. With them he
had no misunderstandings, no meaningless disputes, no disappointments.
They knew him, and were known of him. In their society he felt himself
renewed. There he lived, and loved his life. There, if anywhere, the
Spirit of the Lord came upon him. Hear him, on a cool morning in August,
with the wind in the branches and the crickets in the grass, and think
of him, if you can, as a being too cold for friendship!

"My heart leaps out of my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods.
I, whose life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly
recover my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing.... Ah! if I
could so live that there should be no desultory moments ... I would
walk, I would sit and sleep, with natural piety. What if I could pray
aloud, or to myself, as I went along by the brookside, a cheerful
prayer, like the birds! For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall
delight to be buried in it. And then, to think of those I love among
men, who will know that I love them, though I tell them not.... I thank
you, God. I do not deserve anything; I am unworthy of the least regard;
and yet the world is gilded for my delight, and holidays are prepared
for me, and my path is strewn with flowers.... O keep my senses pure!"

Highly characteristic is that concluding ejaculation. For Thoreau the
five senses were not organs or means of sensuous gratification, but the
five gateways of the soul. He would have them open and undefiled. Upon
that point no man was ever more insistent. Above all, no sense must be
pampered; else it would lose its native freshness and delicacy, and so
its diviner use. That way lay perdition. When a woman came to Concord to
lecture, and Thoreau carried her manuscript to the hall for her, wrapped
in its owner's handkerchief, he complained twenty-four hours afterward
that his pocket "still exhaled cologne." Faint, elusive outdoor odors
were not only a continual delight to him, but a positive means of grace.

So, too, he would rather not see any of the scenic wonders of the world.
Only let his sense of beauty remain uncorrupted, and he could trust his
Musketaquid meadows, and the low hills round about, to feed and satisfy
him forever.

Because of his jealousy in this regard, partly,—and partly from
ignorance, it may be, just as some of his respectable village
acquaintances would have found the Iliad, of which he talked so much,
duller than death in comparison with the works of Mr. Sylvanus Cobb,—he
often spoke in slighting terms of operas and all the more elaborate
forms of music. The ear, he thought, if it were kept innocent, would
find satisfaction in the very simplest of musical sounds. For himself,
there was no language extravagant enough to express his rapturous
delight in them. Now "all the romance of his youthfulest moment" came
flooding back upon him, and anon he was carried away till he "looked
under the lids of Time,"—all by the humming of telegraph-wires or, at
night especially, by the distant baying of a hound.

To the modern "musical person" certain of his confessions under this
head are of a character to excite mirth. He is "much indebted," for
instance, to a neighbor "who will now and then, in the intervals of his
work, draw forth a few strains from his accordion." The neighbor is only
a learner, but, says Thoreau, "I find when his strains cease that I have
been elevated." His daily philosophy is all of a piece, one perceives:
plain fare, plain clothes, plain company, a hut in the woods, an old
book,—and for inspiration the notes of a neighbor's accordion.

More than once, too, he acknowledges his obligation to that famous rural
entertainer and civilizer, the hand-organ. "All Vienna" could not do
more for him, he ventures to think. "It is perhaps the best instrumental
music that we have," he observes; which can hardly have been true, even
in Concord, one prefers to believe, while admitting the possibility. If
it is heard far enough away, he goes on, so that the creaking of the
machinery is lost, "it serves the grandest use for me,—it deepens my
existence."

We smile, of course, as in duty bound, at so artless an avowal; but,
having smiled, we are bound also to render our opinion that the most
_blasé_ concert-goer, if he be a man of native sensibility, will readily
enough discern what Thoreau has in mind, and with equal readiness will
concede to it a measure of reasonableness; for he will have the witness
in himself that the effect of music upon the soul depends as much upon
the temper of the soul as upon the perfection of the instrument. One
day a simple air, simply sung or played, will land him in heaven; and
another day the best efforts of the full symphony orchestra will leave
him in the mire. And after all, it is possibly better, albeit in "poorer
taste," to be transported by the wheezing of an accordion than to be
bored by finer music. As for Thoreau, he studied to be a master of the
art of living; and in the practice of that art, as of any other, it is
the glory of the artist to achieve extraordinary results by ordinary
means. To have one's existence deepened—there cannot be many things more
desirable than that; and as between our unsophisticated recluse and the
average "musical person" aforesaid, the case is perhaps not so one-sided
as at first sight it looks; or, if it be, the odds are possibly not
always on the side of what seems the greater opportunity.

His life, the quality of his life, that for Thoreau was the paramount
concern. To the furthering of that end all things must be held
subservient. Nature, man, books, music, all for him had the same use.
This one thing he did,—he cultivated himself. If any, because of his
so doing, accused him of selfishness, preaching to him of philanthropy,
almsgiving, and what not, his answer was already in his mouth. Mankind,
he was prepared to maintain, was very well off without such helps, which
oftener than not did as much harm as good (though the concrete case at
his elbow—half-clad Johnny Riordan, a fugitive slave, an Irishman who
wished to bring his family over—appealed to him as quickly as to most,
one is glad to notice); and, however that might be, the world needed a
thousand times more than any so-called charity the sight of a man here
and there living for higher ends than the world itself knows of. His
own course, at any rate, was clear before him: "What I am, I am, and
say not. Being is the great explainer."

His life, his _own_ life, that he must live; and he must be in earnest
about it. He was no indifferent, no little-carer, no skeptic, as
if truth and a lie were but varying shades of the same color, and
virtue, according to the old phrase, "a mean between vices." You would
never catch him sighing, "Oh, well!" or "Who knows?" Qualifications,
reconciliations, _rapprochements_, the two sides of the shield, and all
that,—these were considerations not in his line. Before everything else
he was a believer,—an idealist, that is,—the last person in the world to
put up with half-truths or half-way measures. If "existing things" were
thus and so, that was no reason why, with the sect of the Sadducees, he
should make the best of them. What if there _were_ no best of them? What
if they were all bad? And anyhow, why not begin new? It was conceivable,
was it not, that a man should set his own example, and follow his own
copy. General opinion,—what was that? Was a thing better established
because ten thousand fools believed it? Did folly become wisdom by being
raised to a higher power? And antiquity, tradition,—what were they?
Could a blind man of fifteen centuries ago see farther than a blind man
of the present time? And if the blind led the blind, then or now, would
not both fall into the ditch?

Yes, he was undoubtedly peculiar. As to that there could never be
anything but agreement among practical people. In a world where
shiftiness and hesitation are the rule, nothing looks so eccentric
as a straight course. It must be acknowledged, too, that a man whose
goodness has a strong infusion of the bitter, and whose opinions turn
out of the way for nobody, is not apt to be the most comfortable kind of
neighbor. We were not greatly surprised, lately, to hear an excellent
lady remark of Thoreau that, from all she had read about him, she
thought he must have been "a very disagreeable gentleman." It could
hardly be said of him, as Mr. Birrell says of Matthew Arnold, who was
himself a pretty serious person, and, after a way of his own, a preacher
of righteousness, that he "conspired and contrived to make things
pleasant."

Being a consistent idealist, he was of course an extremist, falling in
that respect little behind the man out of Nazareth, whose hard sayings,
by all accounts, were sometimes less acceptable than they might have
been, and of whom Thoreau asserted, in his emphatic way, that if his
words were really read from any pulpit in the land, "there would not be
left one stone of that meeting-house upon another." Thoreau worshipped
purity, and the every-day ethical standards of the street were to him
an abomination. "There are certain current expressions and blasphemous
moods of viewing things," he declares, "as when we say 'he is doing
a good business,' more profane than cursing and swearing. There is
death and sin in such words. Let not the children hear them." That
innocent-sounding phrase about "a good business"—as if a business
might be taken for granted as good because it brought in money—was as
abhorrent to him as the outrageous worldly philosophy of an old castaway
like Major Pendennis is to the ordinarily sensitive reader.

He was constitutionally earnest. There are pages of the journal, indeed,
which make one feel that perhaps he was in danger of being too much so
for his own profit. Possibly it is not quite wholesome, possibly, if
one dares to say it, it begets a something like priggishness, for the
soul to be keyed up continually to so strenuous a pitch. In Thoreau's
case, at all events, one is glad for every sign of a slackening of the
tension. "Set the red hen to-day;" "Got green grapes to stew;" "Painted
the bottom of my boat;" trivialities like these, too far apart (one is
tempted to colloquialize, and call them "precious few," finding them so
infrequent and so welcome), strike the reader with a sudden sensation of
relief, as if he had been wading to the chin, and all at once his feet
had touched a shallow.

So, too, one is thankful to come upon a really amusing dissertation
about the tying of shoe-strings, or rather about their too easy untying;
a matter with which, it appears, Thoreau had for years experienced "a
great deal of trouble." His walking companion (Channing, presumably) and
himself had often compared notes about it, concluding after experiments
that the duration of a shoe-tie might be made to serve as a reasonably
accurate unit of measure, as accurate, say, as a stadium or a league.
Channing, indeed, would sometimes go without shoe-strings, rather than
be plagued so incessantly by their dissolute behavior. Finally Thoreau,
being then thirty-six years old, and always exceptionally clever with
his hands, set his wits seriously at work upon knots, and by a stroke
of good fortune (or a stroke of genius) hit upon one which answered
his end; only to be told, on communicating his discovery to a third
party, that he had all his life been tying "granny knots," never having
learned, at school or elsewhere, the secret of a square one! It might be
well, he concludes, if all children were "taught the accomplishment."
Verily, as Hosea Biglow did not say, they didn't know everything down
in Concord.

More refreshing still are entries describing hours of serene communion
with nature, hours in which, as in an instance already cited, the
Spirit of the Lord blessed him, and he forgot even to be good. These
entries, likewise, are less numerous than could be wished, though
perhaps as frequent as could fairly be expected; since ecstasies, like
feasts, must in the nature of things be somewhat broadly spaced; and
it is interesting, not to say surprising, to see how frankly he looks
upon them afterward as subjects on which to try his pen. In these
"seasons when our genius reigns we may be powerless for expression," he
remarks; but in calmer hours, when talent is again active, "the memory
of those rarer moods comes to color our picture, and is the permanent
paint-pot, as it were, into which we dip our brush." But, in truth, the
whole journal, some volumes of which are carefully indexed in his own
hand, is quite undisguisedly a collection of thoughts, feelings, and
observations, out of which copy is to be extracted. In it, he says,
"I wish to set down such choice experiences that my own writings may
inspire me, and at last I may make wholes of parts.... Each thought that
is welcomed and recorded is a nest-egg by the side of which more will
be laid."

A born writer, he is "greedy of occasions to express" himself. He
counts it "wise to write on many subjects, that so he may find the right
and inspiring one." "There are innumerable avenues to a perception of
the truth," he tells himself. "Improve the suggestion of each object,
however humble, however slight and transient the provocation. What else
is there to be improved?"

The literary diarist, like the husbandman, knows not which shall
prosper. Morning and evening, he can only sow the seed. So it was with
Thoreau. "A strange and unaccountable thing," he pronounces his journal.
"It will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not good, nor
its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost and richest
wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest homemade
stuffs; but after months or years I may discover the wealth of India,
and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in that confused
heap, and what seemed a festoon of dried apple or pumpkin will prove a
string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from Coromandel."

Well, we make sure that whoever tumbles the heap over now, more than
forty years after the last object was laid upon it, will be rewarded
with many and many a jewel. Here, for his encouragement, are half a
dozen out of the goodly number that one customer has lately turned up,
in a hasty rummaging of the counter:—

"When a dog runs at you, whistle for him."

"We must be at the helm at least once a day; we must feel the tiller
rope in our hands, and know that if we sail, we steer."

"In composition I miss the hue of the mind."

"After the era of youth is past, the knowledge of ourselves is an alloy
that spoils our satisfactions."

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

"Silence is of various depths and fertility, like soil."

"Praise should be spoken as simply and naturally as a flower emits its
fragrance."

Here, again, is a mere nothing, a momentary impression caught,
in ball-players' language, on the fly; nothing like a pearl from
Coromandel, if you will, but at the worst a toothsome bite out of
a wild New England apple. It is winter. "I saw a team come out of a
path in the woods," says Thoreau, "as though it had never gone in, but
belonged there, and only came out like Elisha's bears." There will be
few country-bred Yankee boys, we imagine, who will not remember to
have experienced something precisely like that, under precisely the
same circumstances, though it never occurred to them to put the feeling
into words, much less to preserve it in a drop of ink. That is one of
the good things that a writer does for us. And our country-bred boy,
if we mistake not, is likely to consider this one careless sentence
of Thoreau, which adds not a cent's worth to the sum of what is
called human knowledge, as of more value than any dozen pages of his
painstaking botanical records.

Thoreau the naturalist appears in the journal, not as a master, but as
a learner. It could hardly be otherwise, of course, a journal being
what it is. There we see him conning by himself his daily lesson,
correcting yesterday by to-day, and to-day by to-morrow, progressing,
like every scholar, over the stepping-stones of his own mistakes. Of
the branches he pursued, as far as the present writer can presume to
judge, he was strongest in botany; certainly it was to plants that
he most persistently devoted himself; but even there he had as many
uncertainties as discoveries to set down; and he set them down with
unflagging zeal and unrestrained particularity. The daily account
is running over with question-marks. His patience was admirable; the
more so as he worked entirely by himself, with few of the helps that
in this better-furnished time almost belie the old proverb, and make
even the beginner's path a kind of royal road to learning. The day of
"How-to-Know" handbooks had not yet dawned.

Of his bird-studies it would be interesting, if there were room, to
speak at greater length. Here, even more than in botany, if that were
possible, he suffered for lack of assistance, and even in his later
entries leaves the present-day reader wondering how so eager a scholar
could have spent so many years in learning so comparatively little. The
mystery is partly cleared, however, when it is found that until 1854—say
for more than a dozen years—he studied without a glass. He does not
buy things, he explains, with characteristic self-satisfaction, till
long after he begins to want them, so that when he does get them he is
"prepared to make a perfect use of them." It was wasteful economy. He
might as well have botanized without a pocket-lens.

But glass or no glass, how could an ornithological observer, whose
power—so Emerson said—"seemed to indicate additional senses," be in the
field daily for ten or fifteen years before setting eyes upon his first
rose-breasted grosbeak?—which memorable event happened to Thoreau on
the 13th of June, 1853! How could a man who had made it his business
for at least a dozen years to "name all the birds without a gun," stand
for a long time within a few feet of a large bird, so busy that it
could not be scared far away, and then go home uncertain whether he had
been looking at a woodcock or a snipe? How could he, when thirty-five
years old, see a flock of sparrows, and hear them sing, and not be
sure whether or not they were chipping sparrows? And how could a man
so strong in times and seasons, always marking dates with an almanac's
exactness, how could he, so late as '52, inquire concerning the downy
woodpecker, one of the more familiar and constant of year-round birds,
"Do we see him in the winter?" and again, a year later, be found asking
whether he, the same downy woodpecker, is not the first of our woodland
birds to arrive in the spring? At thirty-six he is amazed to the extent
of double exclamation points by the sight of a flicker so early as March
29.

It fills one with astonishment to hear him (May 4, 1853) describing
what he takes to be an indigo-bird after this fashion: "Dark throat
and light beneath, and white spot on wings," with hoarse, rapid notes,
a kind of _twee, twee, twee,_ not musical. The stranger may have
been—most likely it was—a black-throated blue warbler; which is as
much like an indigo-bird as a bluebird is like a blue jay,—or a yellow
apple like an orange. And the indigo-bird, it should be said, is a
common New-Englander, such as one of our modern schoolboy bird-gazers
would have no difficulty in getting into his "list" any summer day in
Concord; while the warbler in question, though nothing but a migrant,
and somewhat seclusive in its habits, is so regular in its passage and
so unmistakably marked (no bird more so), that it seems marvellous how
Thoreau, prowling about everywhere with his eyes open, should year after
year have missed it.

The truth appears to be that even of the commoner sorts of birds that
breed in eastern Massachusetts or migrate through it, Thoreau—during
the greater part of his life, at least—knew by sight and name only a
small proportion, wonderful as his knowledge seemed to those who, like
Emerson, knew practically nothing.[2]

Not that the journal is likely to prove less interesting to bird-loving
readers on this account. On the contrary, it may rather be more so, as
showing them the means and methods of an ornithological amateur fifty
years ago, and, especially, as providing for them a desirable store of
ornithological nuts to crack on winter evenings. Some such reader, by
a careful collation of the data which the publication of the journal
as a whole puts at his disposal, will perhaps succeed in settling the
identity of the famous "night-warbler;" a bird which some, we believe,
have suspected to be nothing rarer than the almost superabundant
oven-bird, but which, so far as we ourselves know, may have been almost
any one (or any two or three) of our smaller common birds that are given
to occasional ecstatic song-flights.[3] Whatever it was, it was of use
to Thoreau for the quickening of his imagination, and for literary
purposes; and Emerson was well advised in warning him to beware of
booking it, lest life henceforth should have so much the less to show
him.

It must be said, however, that Thoreau stood in slight need of such
a caution. He cherished for himself a pretty favorable opinion of
a certain kind and measure of ignorance. With regard to some of
his ornithological mysteries, for example,—the night-warbler, the
seringo-bird (which with something like certainty we may conjecture to
have been the savanna sparrow), and others,—he flatters himself that his
good genius had withheld their names from him that he might the better
learn their character,—whatever such an expression may be supposed to
mean.

He maintained stoutly, from beginning to end, that he was not of the
ordinary school of naturalists, but "a mystic, a transcendentalist,
and a natural philosopher in one;" though he believed himself, in his
own words, "by constitution as good an observer as most." He will not
be one of those who seek facts as facts, studying nature as a dead
language. He studies her for purposes of his own, in search of the "raw
material of tropes and figures." "I pray for such experience as will
make nature significant," he declares; and then, with the same penful of
ink, he asks: "Is that the swamp gooseberry of Gray now just beginning
to blossom at Saw-Mill Brook? It has a divided style and stamens,
etc., as yet not longer than the calyx, though my slip has no thorns
nor prickles," and so on, and so on. Pages on pages of the journal
are choke-full, literally, of this kind of botanical interrogation,
till the unsympathetic reader will be in danger of surmising that the
mystical searcher after tropes and symbols is sometimes not so utterly
unlike the student of the dead language of fact. But then, it is one
of the virtues of a journal that it is not a work of art, that it has
no form, no fashion (and so does not go out of fashion), and is always
at liberty to contradict itself. As Thoreau said, he tumbled his goods
upon the counter; no single customer is bound to be pleased with them
all; different men, different tastes; let each select from the pile the
things that suit his fancy.

For our own part, we acknowledge,—and the shrewd reader may already
have remarked the fact,—we have not been disinclined to choose here and
there a bit of some less rare and costly stuff. The man is so sternly
virtuous, so inexorably in earnest, so heart-set upon perfection,
that we almost like him best when for a moment he betrays something
that suggests a touch of human frailty. We prick up our ears when he
speaks of a woman he once in a while goes to see, who tells him to
his face that she thinks him self-conceited. Now, then, we whisper
to ourselves, how will this man who despises flattery, and, boasting
himself a "commoner," professes that for him "there is something
devilish in manners,"—how will this candor-loving, truth-speaking,
truth-appreciating man enjoy the rebuke of so unmannered a mentor? And
we smile and say Aha! when he adds that the lady wonders why he does
not visit her oftener.

We smile, too, when he brags, in early February, that he has not yet put
on his winter clothing, amusing himself the while over the muffs and
furs of his less hardy neighbors, his own "simple diet" making him so
tough in the fibre that he "flourishes like a tree;" and then, a week
later, writes with unbroken equanimity that he is down with bronchitis,
contenting himself to spend his days cuddled in a warm corner by the
stove.

Trifles of this kind encourage a pleasant feeling of brotherly
relationship. He is one of us, after all, with like passions. But
of course we really like him best when he is at his best,—as in some
outpouring of his love for things natural and wild. Let us have one
more such quotation: "Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry,
uninhabited roads, which lead away from towns, which lead us away from
temptation, which conduct us to the outside of earth, over its uppermost
crust; where you may forget in what country you are travelling; where
your head is more in heaven than your feet are on earth; where you can
pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness.... There I
can walk and recover the lost child that I am without any ringing of a
bell."

For real warmth, when once the fire burns, who can exceed our stoic?

We like, also, his bits of prettiness, things in which he is second to
nobody, though prettiness, again, is not supposed to be the stoic's
"note;" and they are all the prettier, as well as ten times more
welcome, because he has the grace—and the sound literary sense—to drop
them here and there, as it were casually, upon a ground of simple,
unaffected prose. Here, now, is a sentence that by itself is worth a
deal of ornithology: "The song sparrow is heard in fields and pastures,
setting the midsummer day to music,—as if it were the music of a mossy
rail or fence-post." Of dragon-flies he says: "How lavishly they are
painted! How cheap was the paint! How free was the fancy of their
Creator!" In early June, when woods are putting forth leaves, "the
summer is pitching its tent." He finds the dainty fringed polygala
(whose ordinary color is a lovely rose-purple) sporting white blossoms,
and remarks: "Thus many flowers have their nun sisters, dressed in
white." Soaring hawks are "kites without strings;" and when he and his
companion are travelling across country, keeping out of the sight of
houses, yet compelled to traverse here and there a farmer's field, they
"shut every window with an apple tree."

Gems like these one need not be a connoisseur to appreciate, and they
are common upon his counter. It was a good name that Channing gave him:
"The Poet-Naturalist."

But there are better things than flowers and jewels to be found in
Thoreau's stock. There are cordials and tonics there, to brace a man
when he is weary; eye-washes, to cleanse his vision till he sees the
heights above him and repents the lowness of his aims and the vulgarity
of his satisfactions; blisters and irritant plasters in large variety
and of warranted strength; but little or nothing, so far as the present
customer has noticed, in the line of anodynes and sleeping-powders.
There we may buy moral wisdom, which is not only the "foundation and
source of good writing," as one of the ancients said, but of the arts in
general, especially the art of life. If the world is too much with us,
if wealth attracts and the "rust of copper" has begun to eat into the
soul, if we are in danger of selling our years for things that perish
with the using, here we may find correctives, and go away thankful,
rejoicing henceforth to be rich in a better coinage than any that bears
the world's stamp. The very exaggerations of the master—if we call them
such—may do us good like a medicine; for there are diseased conditions
which yield to nothing so quickly as to a shock.

As for Thoreau himself, life might have been smoother for him had he
been less exacting in his idealism, more tolerant of imperfection in
others and in himself; had he taken his studies, and even his spiritual
aspirations, a grain or two less seriously. A bit of boyish play now
and then, the bow quite unbent, or a dose of novel-reading of the
love-making, humanizing (Trollopean) sort, could one imagine it, with
a more temperate cherishing of his moodiness, might have done him no
harm. It would have been for his comfort, so much may confidently be
said, whether for his happiness is another question, had he been one
of those gentler humorists who can sometimes see themselves, as all
humorists have the gift of seeing other people, funny side out. But
then, had these things been so, had his natural scope been wider, his
genius, so to say, more tropical, richer, freer, more expansive, more
various and flexible, more like the spreading banyan and less like the
soaring, sky-pointing spruce,—why, then he would no longer have been
Thoreau; for better or worse, his speech would have lost its distinctive
tang; and in the long run the world, which likes a touch of bitter and
a touch of sour, would almost certainly have found the man himself less
interesting, and his books less rememberable. And made as he was, "born
to his own affairs," what else could he do but stick to himself? "We
are constantly invited to be what we are," he said. The words might
fittingly have been cut upon his gravestone.

B. T.

HENRY D. THOREAU

GLEANINGS
OR WHAT TIME
HAS NOT REAPED
OF MY
JOURNAL

[The small manuscript volume bearing on its first fly-leaf the legend
printed on the preceding page is evidently a transcript of unused
passages in the early journals, and this is also the case with several
succeeding small volumes. See note on page 342. The following mottoes
occupy the next three pages of the book.]

"By all means use sometimes to be alone.
Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.
Dare to look in thy chest; for 'tis thine own:
And tumble up and down what thou find'st there.
Who cannot rest till he good fellows find,
He breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind."

HERBERT, _The Church Porch_.

"Friends and companions, get you gone!
'Tis my desire to be alone;
Ne'er well, but when my thoughts and I
_Do domineer in privacy_."

BURTON, _Anatomy of Melancholy_.

"Two Paradises are in one,
To live in Paradise alone."

MARVELL, _The Garden_.

[Illustration: _Henry David Thoreau in 1854, from the Rowse Crayon in
the Concord Public Library_]

THE JOURNAL OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU

1837

(ÆT. 20)

_Oct 22._ "What are you doing now?" he asked. "Do you keep a journal?"
So I make my first entry to-day.

SOLITUDE

To be alone I find it necessary to escape the present,—I avoid myself.
How could I be alone in the Roman emperor's chamber of mirrors? I seek
a garret. The spiders must not be disturbed, nor the floor swept, nor
the lumber arranged.

The Germans say, "Es ist alles wahr wodurch du besser wirst."

THE MOULD OUR DEEDS LEAVE

_Oct. 24._ Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one
life is the making room for another. The oak dies down to the ground,
leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould, which will impart a
vigorous life to an infant forest. The pine leaves a sandy and sterile
soil, the harder woods a strong and fruitful mould.

So this constant abrasion and decay makes the soil of my future growth.
As I live now so shall I reap. If I grow pines and birches, my virgin
mould will not sustain the oak; but pines and birches, or, perchance,
weeds and brambles, will constitute my second growth.[4]

SPRING

_Oct 25._ She appears, and we are once more children; we commence again
our course with the new year. Let the maiden no more return, and men
will become poets for very grief. No sooner has winter left us time
to regret her smiles, than we yield to the advances of poetic frenzy.
"The flowers look kindly at us from the beds with their child eyes,
and in the horizon the snow of the far mountains dissolves into light
vapor."—GOETHE, _Torquato Tasso_.

THE POET

"He seems to avoid—even to flee from us,—
To seek something which we know not,
And perhaps he himself after all knows not."—_Ibid._

_Oct 26._

"His eye hardly rests upon the earth;
His ear hears the one-clang of nature;
What history records,—what life gives,—
Directly and gladly his genius takes it up:
His mind collects the widely dispersed,
And his feeling animates the inanimate.
Often he ennobles what appeared to us common,
And the prized is as nothing to him.
In his own magic circle wanders
The wonderful man, and draws us
With him to wander, and take part in it:
He seems to draw near to us, and remains afar from us:
He seems to be looking at us, and spirits, forsooth,
Appear to him strangely in our places."—_Ibid._

HOW MAN GROWS

"A noble man has not to thank a private circle for his culture.
Fatherland and world must work upon him. Fame and infamy must he learn
to endure. He will be constrained to know himself and others. Solitude
shall no more lull him with her flattery. The foe _will_ not, the
friend _dares_ not, spare him. Then, striving, the youth puts forth his
strength, feels what he is, and feels himself soon a man."

"A talent is builded in solitude,
A character in the stream of the world."

"He only fears man who knows him not, and he who avoids him will soonest
misapprehend him."—_Ibid._

ARIOSTO

"As nature decks her inward rich breast in a green variegated dress,
so clothes he all that can make men honorable in the blooming garb of
the fable.... The well of superfluity bubbles near, and lets us see
variegated wonder-fishes. The air is filled with rare birds, the meads
and copses with strange herds, wit lurks half concealed in the verdure,
and wisdom from time to time lets sound from a golden cloud sustained
words, while frenzy wildly seems to sweep the well-toned lute, yet holds
itself measured in perfect time."

BEAUTY

"That beauty is transitory which alone you seem to honor."—GOETHE,
_Torquato Tasso_.

THE FOG

_Oct. 27._ The prospect is limited to Nobscot and Annursnack. The trees
stand with boughs downcast like pilgrims beaten by a storm, and the
whole landscape wears a sombre aspect.

So when thick vapors cloud the soul, it strives in vain to escape from
its humble working-day valley, and pierce the dense fog which shuts out
from view the blue peaks in its horizon, but must be content to scan
its near and homely hills.

DUCKS AT GOOSE POND

_Oct 29._ Two ducks, of the summer or wood species, which were merrily
dabbling in their favorite basin, struck up a retreat on my approach,
and seemed disposed to take French leave, paddling off with swan-like
majesty. They are first-rate swimmers, beating me at a round pace,
and—what was to me a new trait in the duck character—dove every
minute or two and swam several feet under water, in order to escape
our attention. Just before immersion they seemed to give each other
a significant nod, and then, as if by a common understanding, 'twas
heels up and head down in the shaking of a duck's wing. When they
reappeared, it was amusing to observe with what a self-satisfied,
darn-it-how-he-nicks-'em air they paddled off to repeat the experiment.

THE ARROWHEAD

A curious incident happened some four or six weeks ago which I think
it worth the while to record. John and I had been searching for Indian
relics, and been successful enough to find two arrowheads and a pestle,
when, of a Sunday evening, with our heads full of the past and its
remains, we strolled to the mouth of Swamp Bridge Brook. As we neared
the brow of the hill forming the bank of the river, inspired by my
theme, I broke forth into an extravagant eulogy on those savage times,
using most violent gesticulations by way of illustration. "There on
Nawshawtuct," said I, "was their lodge, the rendezvous of the tribe, and
yonder, on Clamshell Hill, their feasting ground. This was, no doubt,
a favorite haunt; here on this brow was an eligible lookout post. How
often have they stood on this very spot, at this very hour, when the
sun was sinking behind yonder woods and gilding with his last rays
the waters of the Musketaquid, and pondered the day's success and the
morrow's prospects, or communed with the spirit of their fathers gone
before them to the land of shades!

"Here," I exclaimed, "stood Tahatawan; and there" (to complete the
period) "is Tahatawan's arrowhead."

We instantly proceeded to sit down on the spot I had pointed to, and I,
to carry out the joke, to lay bare an ordinary stone which my whim had
selected, when lo! the first I laid hands on, the grubbing stone that
was to be, proved a most perfect arrowhead, as sharp as if just from
the hands of the Indian fabricator!!!

SUNRISE

_Oct. 30._ First we have the gray twilight of the poets, with dark and
barry clouds diverging to the zenith. Then glows the intruding cloud in
the east, as if it bore a precious jewel in its bosom; a deep round gulf
of golden gray indenting its upper edge, while slender rules of fleecy
vapor, radiating from the common centre, like light-armed troops, fall
regularly into their places.

SAILING WITH AND AGAINST THE STREAM

_Nov. 3._ If one would reflect, let him embark on some placid stream,
and float with the current. He cannot resist the Muse. As we ascend the
stream, plying the paddle with might and main, snatched and impetuous
thoughts course through the brain. We dream of conflict, power, and
grandeur. But turn the prow down stream, and rock, tree, kine, knoll,
assuming new and varying positions, as wind and water shift the scene,
favor the liquid lapse of thought, far-reaching and sublime, but ever
calm and gently undulating.

TRUTH

_Nov. 5._ Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from
before and in broad daylight.

STILL STREAMS RUN DEEPEST

_Nov. 9._ It is the rill whose "silver sands and pebbles sing eternal
ditties with the spring." The early frosts bridge its narrow channel,
and its querulous note is hushed. Only the flickering sunlight on its
sandy bottom attracts the beholder. But there are souls whose depths
are never fathomed,—on whose bottom the sun never shines. We get a
distant view from the precipitous banks, but never a draught from their
mid-channels. Only a sunken rock or fallen oak can provoke a murmur,
and their surface is a stranger to the icy fetters which bind fast a
thousand contributory rills.[5]

DISCIPLINE

_Nov. 12._ I yet lack discernment to distinguish the whole lesson of
to-day; but it is not lost,—it will come to me at last. My desire is to
know _what_ I have lived, that I may know _how_ to live henceforth.

SIN DESTROYS THE PERCEPTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL

_Nov. 13._ This shall be the test of innocence—if I can hear a taunt,
and look out on this friendly moon, pacing the heavens in queen-like
majesty, with the accustomed yearning.

TRUTH

Truth is ever returning into herself. I glimpse one feature to-day,
another to-morrow; and the next day they are blended.

GOETHE

_Nov. 15._ "And now that it is evening, a few clouds in the mild
atmosphere rest upon the mountains, more stand still than move in the
heavens, and immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to
increase; then feels one once more at home in the world, and not as an
alien,—an exile. I am contented as though I had been born and brought
up here, and now returned from a Greenland or whaling voyage. Even the
dust of my Fatherland, as it is whirled about the wagon, which for so
long a time I had not seen, is welcome. The clock-and-bell jingling
of the crickets is very agreeable, penetrating, and not without a
meaning. Pleasant is it when roguish boys whistle in emulation of a
field of such songstresses. One imagines that they really enhance each
other. The evening is perfectly mild as the day. Should an inhabitant
of the south, coming from the south, hear of my rapture, he would deem
me very childish. Alas! what I here express have I long felt under an
unpropitious heaven. And now this joy is to me an exception, which I am
henceforth to enjoy,—a necessity of my nature."—_Italiänische Reise._[6]

PONKAWTASSETT

_Nov. 16._ There goes the river, or rather is, "in serpent error
wandering," the jugular vein of Musketaquid. Who knows how much of
the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants was caught from its dull
circulation?

The snow gives the landscape a washing-day appearance,—here a streak
of white, there a streak of dark; it is spread like a napkin over the
hills and meadows. This must be a rare drying day, to judge from the
vapor that floats over the vast clothes-yard.

A hundred guns are firing and a flag flying in the village in
celebration of the whig victory. Now a short dull report,—the mere disk
of a sound, shorn of its beams,—and then a puff of smoke rises in the
horizon to join its misty relatives in the skies.

GOETHE

He gives such a glowing description of the old tower, that they who
had been born and brought up in the neighborhood must needs look over
their shoulders, "that they might behold with their eyes, what I had
praised to their ears, ... and I added nothing, not even the ivy which
for centuries had decorated the walls."—_Italiänische Reise._[7]

SUNRISE

_Nov. 17._ Now the king of day plays at bo-peep round the world's
corner, and every cottage window smiles a golden smile,—a very picture
of glee. I see the water glistening in the eye. The smothered breathings
of awakening day strike the ear with an undulating motion; over hill
and dale, pasture and woodland, come they to me, and I am at home in
the world.

THE SKY

If there is nothing new on earth, still there is something new in the
heavens. We have always a resource in the skies. They are constantly
turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types in this blue ground,
and the inquiring may always read a new truth.[8]

VIRGIL

_Nov. 18._ "Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles"[9] is such a line as would
save an epic; and how finely he concludes his "agrestem musam," now that
Silenus has done, and the stars have heard his story,—

"Cogere donec oves stabulis, numerumque referre
Jussit, et invito processit Vesper Olympo."

HARMONY

Nature makes no noise. The howling storm, the rustling leaf, the
pattering rain are no disturbance, there is an essential and unexplored
harmony in them. Why is it that thought flows with so deep and sparkling
a current when the sound of distant music strikes the ear? When I
would muse I complain not of a rattling tune on the piano—a Battle of
Prague even—if it be harmony, but an irregular, discordant drumming is
intolerable.

SHADOWS

When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul, where is the
substance? Has it always its origin in sin? and is that sin in me?

VIRGIL

_Nov. 20._ I would read Virgil, if only that I might be reminded of the
identity of human nature in all ages. I take satisfaction in "jam laeto
turgent in palmite gemmae," or "Strata jacent passim sua quaeque sub
arbore poma." It was the same world, and the same men inhabited it.[10]

NAWSHAWTUCT

_Nov. 21._ One must needs climb a hill to know what a world he inhabits.
In the midst of this Indian summer I am perched on the topmost rock of
Nawshawtuct, a velvet wind blowing from the southwest. I seem to feel
the atoms as they strike my cheek. Hills, mountains, steeples stand out
in bold relief in the horizon, while I am resting on the rounded boss
of an enormous shield, the river like a vein of silver encircling its
edge, and thence the shield gradually rises to its rim, the horizon.
Not a cloud is to be seen, but villages, villas, forests, mountains,
one above another, till they are swallowed up in the heavens.[11] The
atmosphere is such that, as I look abroad upon the length and breadth
of the land, it recedes from my eye, and I seem to be looking for the
threads of the velvet.

Thus I admire the grandeur of my emerald carriage, with its border of
blue, in which I am rolling through space.

THOUGHTS

_Nov. 26._ I look around for thoughts when I am overflowing myself.
While I live on, thought is still in embryo,—it stirs not within me.
Anon it begins to assume shape and comeliness, and I deliver it, and
clothe it in its garment of language. But alas! how often when thoughts
choke me do I resort to a spat on the back, or swallow a crust, or do
anything but expectorate them!

HOAR FROST AND GREEN RIVER

_Nov. 28._ Every tree, fence, and spire of grass that could raise its
head above the snow was this morning covered with a dense hoar frost.
The trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping. On
this side they were huddled together, their gray hairs streaming, in a
secluded valley which the sun had not yet penetrated, and on that they
went hurrying off in Indian file by hedgerows and watercourses, while
the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to
hide their diminished heads in the snow.

The branches and taller grasses were covered with a wonderful
ice-foliage, answering leaf for leaf to their summer dress. The centre,
diverging, and even more minute fibres were perfectly distinct and the
edges regularly indented.

These leaves were on the side of the twig or stubble opposite to the sun
(when it was not bent toward the east), meeting it for the most part at
right angles, and there were others standing out at all possible angles
upon these, and upon one another.

It struck me that these ghost leaves and the green ones whose forms they
assume were the creatures of the same law. It could not be in obedience
to two several laws that the vegetable juices swelled gradually into the
perfect leaf on the one hand, and the crystalline particles trooped to
their standard in the same admirable order on the other.

The river, viewed from the bank above, appeared of a yellowish-green
color, but on a nearer approach this phenomenon vanished; and yet the
landscape was covered with snow.[12]

ICE-HARP

_Dec. 5._ My friend tells me he has discovered a new note in nature,
which he calls the Ice-Harp. Chancing to throw a handful of pebbles upon
the pond where there was an air chamber under the ice, it discoursed a
pleasant music to him.

Herein resides a tenth muse, and as he was the man to discover it
probably the extra melody is in him.

GOETHE

_Dec. 8._ He is generally satisfied with giving an exact description
of objects as they appear to him, and his genius is exhibited in the
points he seizes upon and illustrates. His description of Venice and
her environs as seen from the Marcusthurm is that of an unconcerned
spectator, whose object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and
that, too, for the most part, in the order in which he saw it. It
is this trait which is chiefly to be prized in the book; even the
reflections of the author do not interfere with his descriptions.

It would thus be possible for inferior minds to produce invaluable
books.[13]

MEASURE

_Dec. 10._ Not the carpenter alone carries his rule in his pocket.
Space is quite subdued to us. The meanest peasant finds in a hair of
his head, or the white crescent upon his nail, the unit of measure for
the distance of the fixed stars. His middle finger measures how many
_digits_ into space; he extends a few times his thumb and finger, and
the continent is _spanned_; he stretches out his arms, and the sea is
_fathomed_.

THOUGHT

_Dec. 12._ There are times when thought elbows her way through the
underwood of words to the clear blue beyond;

"O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues _her_ way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies;..."

but let her don her cumbersome working-day garment, and each sparkling
dewdrop will seem a "slough of despond."

PECULIARITY

When we speak of a peculiarity in a man or a nation, we think to
describe only one part, a mere mathematical point; but it is not so. It
pervades all. Some parts may be further removed than others from this
centre, but not a particle so remote as not to be either shined on or
shaded by it.

THORNS

No faculty in man was created with a useless or sinister intent; in no
respect can he be wholly bad, but the worst passions have their root
in the best,—as anger, for instance, may be only a perverted sense of
wrong which yet retains some traces of its origin.[14] So a spine is
proved to be only an abortive branch, "which, notwithstanding, even as
a spine, bears leaves, and, in _Euphorbia heptagona_, sometimes flowers
and fruit."

JACK FROST

_Dec. 15._ As further confirmation of the fact that vegetation is a kind
of crystallization, I observe that upon the edge of the melting frost
on the windows, Jack is playing singular freaks,—now bundling together
his needle-shaped leaves so as to resemble fields waving with grain, or
shocks of wheat rising here and there from the stubble. On one side the
vegetation of the torrid zone is presented you,—high-towering palms,
and widespread banyans, such as we see in pictures of Oriental scenery;
on the other are arctic pines, stiff-frozen, with branches downcast,
like the arms of tender men in frosty weather.[15] In some instances
the panes are covered with little feathery flocks, where the particles
radiate from a common centre, the number of radii varying from three
to seven or eight. The crystalline particles are partial to the creases
and flaws in the glass, and, when these extend from sash to sash, form
complete hedgerows, or miniature watercourses, where dense masses of
crystal foliage "high over-arched imbower."

FROZEN MIST

_Dec. 16._ The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of
vapor,—the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel,—which
seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold. In some places it
was spread out like gauze over the tops of the trees, forming extended
lawns, where elves and fairies held high tournament;

"before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears,
Till thickest legions close."[16]

The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light,
the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the
salmon-color of the horizon. And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph
to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the
east, and anon his "long levelled rules" fall sector-wise, and humblest
cottage windows greet their lord.

FACTS

How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her
true meaning. The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season
will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated. Mere
accumulators of facts—collectors of materials for the master-workmen—are
like those plants growing in dark forests, which "put forth only leaves
instead of blossoms."

DRUIDS

_Dec. 17._ In all ages and nations we observe a leaning towards a right
state of things. This may especially be seen in the history of the
priest, whose life approaches most nearly to that of the ideal man. The
Druids paid no taxes, and "were allowed exemption from warfare and all
other things." The clergy are even now a privileged class.

In the last stage of civilization Poetry, Religion, and Philosophy will
be one; and this truth is glimpsed in the first. The druidical order was
divided into Druids, Bards, and Ouates. "The Bards were the poets and
musicians, of whom some were satirists, and some encomiasts. The Ouates
sacrificed, divined, and contemplated the nature of things. The Druids
cultivated physiology and moral philosophy; or, as Diodorus says, were
their philosophers and theologians."

GOETHE

_Dec. 18._ He required that his heroine, Iphigenia, should say nothing
which might not be uttered by the holy Agathe, whose picture he
contemplated.

IMMORTALITY POST

The nations assert an immortality _post_ as well as _ante_. The
Athenians wore a golden grasshopper as an emblem that they sprang from
the earth, and the Arcadians pretended that they were προσέληνοι, or
before the moon.

The Platos do not seem to have considered this back-reaching tendency
of the human mind.

THE PRIDE OF ANCESTRY

Men are pleased to be called the sons of their fathers,—so little truth
suffices them,—and whoever addresses them by this or a similar title is
termed a poet. The orator appeals to the sons of Greece, of Britannia,
of France, or of Poland; and our fathers' homely name acquires some
interest from the fact that Sakai-suna means sons-of-the-Sakai.[17]

HELL

_Dec. 19._ Hell itself may be contained within the compass of a spark.

SAXONS

The fact seems at first an anomalous one that the less a people have
to contend for the more tenacious they are of their rights. The Saxons
of Ditmarsia contended for a principle, not for their sterile sands and
uncultivated marshes.

We are on the whole the same Saxons that our fathers were, when it was
said of them, "They are emulous in hospitality, because to plunder and
to lavish is the glory of an Holsatian; not to be versed in the science
of depredation is, in his opinion, to be stupid and base."

The French are the same Franks of whom it is written, "Francis familiare
est ridendo fidem frangere;" "Gens Francorum infidelis est. Si perjeret
Francus quid novi faciet, qui perjuriam ipsam sermonis genus putat esse
non criminis."

CRYSTALS

I observed this morning that the ice at Swamp Bridge was checkered with
a kind of mosaic-work of white creases or channels; and when I examined
the under side, I found it to be covered with a mass of crystallizations
from three to five inches deep, standing, or rather depending, at right
angles to the true ice, which was about an eighth of an inch thick.
There was a yet older ice six or eight inches below this. The crystals
were for the most part triangular prisms with the lower end open,
though, in some cases, they had run into each other so as to form four
or five sided prisms. When the ice was laid upon its smooth side, they
resembled the roofs and steeples of a Gothic city, or the vessels of a
crowded haven under a press of canvas.

I noticed also that where the ice in the road had melted and left
the mud bare, the latter, as if crystallized, discovered countless
rectilinear fissures, an inch or more in length—a continuation, as it
were, of the checkered ice.[18]

_Dec. 22._ About a year ago, having set aside a bowl which had contained
some rhubarb grated in water, without wiping it, I was astonished to
find, a few days afterward, that the rhubarb had crystallized, covering
the bottom of the bowl with perfect cubes, of the color and consistency
of glue, and a tenth of an inch in diameter.

CRYSTALS

_Dec. 23._ Crossed the river to-day on the ice. Though the weather is
raw and wintry and the ground covered with snow, I noticed a solitary
robin, who looked as if he needed to have his services to the Babes in
the Woods speedily requited.

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 resembling the plumes
of the pine, might pass for a phalanx of spears.[19] 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.

REVOLUTIONS

_Dec. 27._ Revolutions are never sudden. Not one man, nor many men, in a
few years or generations, suffice to regulate events and dispose mankind
for the revolutionary movement. The hero is but the crowning stone
of the pyramid,—the keystone of the arch. Who was Romulus or Remus,
Hengist or Horsa, that we should attribute to them Rome or England?
They are famous or infamous because the progress of events has chosen
to make them its stepping-stones. But we would know where the avalanche
commenced, or the hollow in the rock whence springs the Amazon. The most
important is apt to be some silent and unobtrusive fact in history. In
449 three Saxon cyules arrived on the British coast,—"Three scipen gode
comen mid than flode, three hundred cnihten."[20] The pirate of the
British coast was no more the founder of a state than the scourge of
the German shore.

HEROES

The real heroes of minstrelsy have been ideal, even when the names of
actual heroes have been perpetuated. The real Arthur, who "not only
excelled the experienced past, but also the possible future," of whom it
was affirmed for many centuries that he was not dead, but "had withdrawn
from the world into some magical region; from which at a future crisis
he was to reappear, and lead the Cymri in triumph through the island,"
whose character and actions were the theme of the bards of Bretagne
and the foundation of their interminable romances, was only an ideal
impersonation.

[Illustration: _Frost Crystals_]

Men claim for the ideal an actual existence also, but do not often
expand the actual into the ideal. "If you do not believe me, go into
Bretagne, and mention in the streets or villages, that Arthur is really
dead like other men; you will not escape with impunity; you will be
either hooted with the curses of your hearers, or stoned to death."

HOMESICKNESS

The most remarkable instance of homesickness is that of the colony of
Franks transplanted by the Romans from the German Ocean to the Euxine,
who at length resolving to a man to abandon the country, seized the
vessels which carried them out, and reached at last their native shores,
after innumerable difficulties and dangers upon the Mediterranean and
Atlantic.

THE INTERESTING FACTS IN HISTORY

How cheering is it, after toiling through the darker pages of
history,—the heartless and fluctuating crust of human rest and
unrest,—to alight on the solid earth where the sun shines, or rest
in the checkered shade. The fact that Edwin of Northumbria "caused
stakes to be fixed in the highways where he had seen a clear spring,"
and that "brazen dishes were chained to them, to refresh the weary
sojourner, whose fatigues Edwin had himself experienced," is worth all
Arthur's twelve battles.[21] The sun again shines along the highway, the
landscape presents us sunny glades and occasional cultivated patches as
well as dark primeval forests, and it is merry England after all.

_Dec. 31._ As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the
least particle of truth colors our whole life. It is never isolated, or
simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made,
we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. We go picking
up from year to year and laying side by side the _disjecta membra_ of
truth, as he who picked up one by one a row of a hundred stones, and
returned with each separately to his basket.

1838

(ÆT. 20-21)

HEAVEN ON EARTH

_Jan. 6._ As a child looks forward to the coming of the summer, so
could we contemplate with quiet joy the circle of the seasons returning
without fail eternally. As the spring came round during so many years
of the gods, we could go out to admire and adorn anew our Eden, and yet
never tire.

SAXONS

_Jan. 15._ After all that has been said in praise of the Saxon race, we
must allow that our blue-eyed and fair-haired ancestors were originally
an ungodly and reckless crew.

WE MAKE OUR OWN FORTUNE

_Jan. 16._ Man is like a cork which no tempest can sink, but it will
float securely to its haven at last. The world is never the less
beautiful though viewed through a chink or knot-hole.

_Jan. 21._ Man is the artificer of his own happiness. Let him beware
how he complains of the disposition of circumstances, for it is his own
disposition he blames. If this is sour, or that rough, or the other
steep, let him think if it be not his work. If his look curdles all
hearts, let him not complain of a sour reception; if he hobble in his
gait, let him not grumble at the roughness of the way; if he is weak
in the knees, let him not call the hill steep. This was the pith of the
inscription on the wall of the Swedish inn: "You will find at Trolhate
excellent bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring them with you!"[22]

HOAR FROST

Every leaf and twig was this morning covered with a sparkling ice
armor; even the grasses in exposed fields were hung with innumerable
diamond pendants, which jingled merrily when brushed by the foot of
the traveller. It was literally the wreck of jewels and the crash of
gems. It was as though some superincumbent stratum of the earth had been
removed in the night, exposing to light a bed of untarnished crystals.
The scene changed at every step, or as the head was inclined to the
right or the left. There were the opal and sapphire and emerald and
jasper and beryl and topaz and ruby.[23]

Such is beauty ever,—neither here nor there, now nor then,—neither in
Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire. If I seek
her elsewhere because I do not find her at home, my search will prove
a fruitless one.

ZENO

_Feb. 7._ Zeno, the Stoic, stood in precisely the same relation to
the world that I do now. He is, forsooth, bred a merchant—as how many
still!—and can trade and barter, and perchance higgle, and moreover he
can be shipwrecked and cast ashore at the Piræus, like one of your Johns
or Thomases.

He strolls into a shop and is charmed by a book by Xenophon—and
straightway he becomes a philosopher. The sun of a new life's day rises
to him,—serene and unclouded,—which looks over στοά. And still the
fleshly Zeno sails on, shipwrecked, buffeted, tempest-tossed; but the
true Zeno sails ever a placid sea. Play high, play low,—rain, sleet,
or snow,—it's all the same with the Stoic. "Propriety and decorum" were
his Palinurus,—not the base progeny of fashion, but the suggestions of
an experienced taste.

When evening comes he sits down unwearied to the review of his
day,—what's done that's to be undone,—what not done at all still
to be done. Himself Truth's unconcerned helpmate. Another system of
book-keeping this than that the Cyprian trader to Phœnicia practiced!

This was he who said to a certain garrulous young man, "On this account
have we two ears and but one mouth, that we may hear more, and speak
less."

That he had talked concerned not our philosopher, but his audience;
and herein we may see how it is more noble to hear than to speak. The
wisest may apologize that he only said so to hear himself talk, for if
he _heard_ not, as well for him had he never spoken. What is all this
gabble to the _gabbler_? Only the silent reap the profit of it.

SOCIETY

_Feb. 9._ It is wholesome advice,—"to be a man amongst folks." Go into
society if you will, or if you are unwilling, and take a human interest
in its affairs. If you mistake these Messieurs and Mesdames for so many
men and women, it is but erring on the safe side,—or, rather, it is
their error and not yours. Armed with a manly sincerity, you shall not
be trifled with, but drive this business of life. It matters not how
many men are to be addressed,—rebuked,—provided one man rebuke them.

SMALL TALK

To manage the small talk of a party is to make an effort to do what was
at first done, admirably because naturally, at your fireside.

INFLUENCE

_Feb. 13._ It is hard to subject ourselves to an influence. It must
steal upon us when we expect it not, and its work be all done ere we
are aware of it. If we make advances, it is shy; if, when we feel its
presence, we presume to pry into its free-masonry, it vanishes and
leaves us alone in our folly,—brimful but stagnant,—a full channel, it
may be, but no inclination.

FEAR

All fear of the world or consequences is swallowed up in a manly anxiety
to do Truth justice.

OLD BOOKS

_Feb. 15._ The true student will cleave ever to the good, recognizing
no Past, no Present; but wherever he emerges from the bosom of time,
his course is not with the sun,—eastward or westward,—but ever towards
the seashore. Day and night pursues he his devious way, lingering by how
many a Pierian spring, how many an Academus grove, how many a sculptured
portico!—all which—spring, grove, and portico—lie not so wide but he
may take them conveniently in his way.

GREECE

_Feb. 16._ In imagination I hie me to Greece as to enchanted ground.
No storms vex her coasts, no clouds encircle her Helicon or Olympus,
no tempests sweep the peaceful Tempe or ruffle the bosom of the
placid Ægean; but always the beams of the summer's sun gleam along
the entablature of the Acropolis, or are reflected through the mellow
atmosphere from a thousand consecrated groves and fountains; always her
sea-girt isles are dallying with their zephyr guests, and the low of
kine is heard along the meads, and the landscape sleeps—valley and hill
and woodland—a dreamy sleep. Each of her sons created a new heaven and
a new earth for Greece.

SUNDAY

_Feb. 18._ Rightly named Suna-day, or day of the sun. One is satisfied
in some angle by wood-house and garden fence to bask in his beams—to
exist barely—the livelong day.

SPRING

I had not been out long to-day when it seemed that a new Spring was
already born,—not quite weaned, it is true, but verily entered upon
existence. Nature struck up "the same old song in the grass," despite
eighteen inches of snow, and I contrived to smuggle away a grin of
satisfaction by a smothered "Pshaw! and is that all?"

_Feb. 19._

Each summer sound
Is a summer round.[24]

GOETHE

_Feb. 27._ He jogs along at a snail's pace, but ever mindful that the
earth is beneath and the heavens above him. His Italy is not merely
the fatherland of lazzaroni and maccaroni but a solid turf-clad
soil, daily illumined by a genial sun and nightly gleaming in the
still moonshine,—to say nothing of the frequent showers which are
so faithfully recorded. That sail to Palermo was literally a plowing
through of the waves from Naples to Trinacria,—the sky overhead, and
the sea with its isles on either hand.

His hearty good-will to all men is most amiable; not one cross word
has he spoken, but on one occasion, the post boy snivelling, "Signore,
perdonate! quésta è la mia patria," he confesses, "to me poor northerner
came something tear-like into the eyes."[25]

SPRING

_March 1._ March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket
and trousers. It never grows up, but Alexandrian-like "drags its slow
length along," ever springing, bud following close upon leaf, and when
winter comes it is not annihilated, but creeps on mole-like under the
snow, showing its face nevertheless occasionally by fuming springs and
watercourses.

So let it be with man,—let his manhood be a more advanced and still
advancing youth, bud following hard upon leaf. By the side of the
ripening corn let's have a second or third crop of peas and turnips,
decking the fields in a new green. So amid clumps of sere herd's-grass
sometimes flower the violet and buttercup spring-born.

HOMER

_March 3._ Three thousand years and the world so little changed! The
Iliad seems like a natural sound which has reverberated to our days.
Whatever in it is still freshest in the memories of men was most
childlike in the poet. It is the problem of old age,—a second childhood
exhibited in the life of the world. Phœbus Apollo went like night,—ὁ
δ' ἤιε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς. This either refers to the gross atmosphere of the
plague darkening the sun, or to the crescent of night rising solemn and
stately in the east while the sun is setting in the west.

Then Agamemnon darkly lowers on Calchas, prophet of evil,—ὄσσε δέ οἱ
πυρὶ λαμπετόωντε ἐΐκτην,—such a fire-eyed Agamemnon as you may see at
town meetings and elections, as well here as in Troy neighborhood.

A SUNDAY SCENE

_March 4._ Here at my elbow sit five notable, or at least noteworthy,
representatives of this nineteenth century,—of the gender feminine.
One a sedate, indefatigable knitter, not spinster, of the old school,
who had the supreme felicity to be born in days that tried men's souls,
who can, and not unfrequently does, say with Nestor, another of the old
school: "But you are younger than I. For time was when I conversed with
greater men than you. For not at any time have I seen such men, nor
shall see them, as Perithous, and Dryas, and ποιμένα λαῶν," or, in one
word, sole "shepherd of the people," Washington.

And when Apollo has now six times rolled westward, or seemed to roll,
and now for the seventh time shows his face in the east, eyes well-nigh
glazed, long glassed, which have fluctuated only between lamb's wool and
worsted, explore ceaseless some good sermon book. For six days shalt
thou labor and do all thy knitting, but on the seventh, forsooth, thy
reading.[26]

Opposite, across this stone hearth, sits one of no school, but rather
one who schools, a spinster who spins not, with elbow resting on the
book of books, but with eyes turned towards the vain trumpery of that
shelf,—trumpery of sere leaves, blossoms, and waxwork, built on sand,
that presumes to look quite as gay, smell quite as earthy, as though
this were not by good rights the sun's day. I marked how she spurned
that innocent every-day book, "Germany by De Staël," as though a viper
had stung her;—better to rest the elbow on The Book than the eye on such
a page. Poor book! this is thy last chance.

Happy I who can bask in this warm spring sun which illumines all
creatures, as well when they rest as when they toil, not without a
feeling of gratitude! whose life is as blameless—how blameworthy soever
it be—on the Lord's Mona-day as on his Suna-day![27]

Thus much at least a man may do: he may not impose on his
fellows,—perhaps not on himself. Thus much _let_ a man do: confidently
and heartily live up to his thought; for its error, if there be any,
will soonest appear in practice, and if there be none, so much he may
reckon as actual progress in the way of living.

HOMER

The poet does not leap, even in imagination, from Asia to Greece through
mid-air, neglectful of the fair sea and still fairer land beneath him,
but jogs on humanly observant over the intervening segment of a sphere,—

ἐπειὴ μάλα πολλὰ μεταξύ
Οὔρεά τε σκιόεντα, θάλασσά τε ἠχήεσσα,—

for there are very many
Shady mountains, and resounding seas between.[28]

_March 5._ How often, when Achilles like one διάνδιχα μερμήριξεν whether
to retaliate or suppress his wrath, has his good Genius, like Pallas
Athene, gliding down from heaven, θυμῷ φιλέουσά τε, κηδομένη τε, stood
behind him, and whispered peace in his ear![29]

Men may dispute about the fact whether a goddess did actually come down
from heaven, calling it a poet's fancy, but was it not, considering the
stuff that gods are made of, a very truth?

THE AGE OF HONEY

"And to them rose up the sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator of
the Pylians,
And words _sweeter than honey_ flowed from his tongue."[30]

E'en in old Homer's day was honey sweet,—not yet is sour,—tickling the
palate of the blind old man, forsooth, with fresher sweet; then, as now,
whene'er from leaky jar or drivelling lips it daubed the festive board,
proving a baneful lure to swarms of parasites, Homer's cotemporaries,
but alas! like Phthian hero, vulnerable in heel.

WHAT TO DO

But what does all this scribbling amount to? What is now scribbled
in the heat of the moment one can contemplate with somewhat of
satisfaction, but alas! to-morrow—aye, to-night—it is stale, flat, and
unprofitable,—in fine, is not, only its shell remains, like some red
parboiled lobster-shell which, kicked aside never so often, still stares
at you in the path.

What may a man do and not be ashamed of it? He may not do nothing
surely, for straightway he is dubbed Dolittle—aye! christens himself
first—and reasonably, for he was first to duck. But let him do
something, is he the less a Dolittle? Is it actually something done, or
not rather something undone; or, if done, is it not badly done, or at
most well done comparatively?

Such is man,—toiling, heaving, struggling ant-like to shoulder some
stray unappropriated crumb and deposit it in his granary; then runs
out, complacent, gazes heavenward, earthward (for even pismires can look
down), heaven and earth meanwhile looking downward, upward; there seen
of men, world-seen, deed-delivered, vanishes into all-grasping night.
And is he doomed ever to run the same course? Can he not, wriggling,
screwing, self-exhorting, self-constraining, wriggle or screw out
something that shall live,—respected, intact, intangible, not to be
sneezed at?[31]

_March 6._ How can a man sit down and quietly pare his nails, while the
earth goes gyrating ahead amid such a din of sphere music, whirling him
along about her axis some twenty-four thousand miles between sun and
sun, but mainly in a circle some two millions of miles actual progress?
And then such a hurly-burly on the surface—wind always blowing—now a
zephyr, now a hurricane—tides never idle, ever fluctuating—no rest for
Niagara, but perpetual ran-tan on those limestone rocks—and then that
summer simmering which our ears are used to, which would otherwise be
christened confusion worse confounded, but is now ironically called
"silence audible," and above all the incessant tinkering named "hum of
industry," the hurrying to and fro and confused jabbering of men. Can
man do less than get up and shake himself?

COMPOSITION

_March 7._ We should not endeavor coolly to analyze our thoughts, but,
keeping the pen even and parallel with the current, make an accurate
transcript of them. Impulse is, after all, the best linguist, and for
his logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, it cannot fail to be most
convincing. The nearer we approach to a complete but simple transcript
of our thought the more tolerable will be the piece, for we can endure
to consider ourselves in a state of passivity or in involuntary action,
but rarely our efforts, and least of all our rare efforts.

SCRAPS FROM A LECTURE ON "SOCIETY" WRITTEN MARCH 14TH, 1838, DELIVERED
BEFORE OUR LYCEUM, APRIL 11TH

Every proverb in the newspapers originally stood for a truth. Thus the
proverb that man was made for society, so long as it was not allowed to
conflict with another important truth, deceived no one; but, now that
the same words have come to stand for another thing, it may be for a
lie, we are obliged, in order to preserve its significance, to write it
anew, so that properly it will read, Society was made for man.

* * * * *

Man is not at once born into society,—hardly into the world. The world
that he is hides for a time the world that he inhabits.

* * * * *

That which properly constitutes the life of every man is a profound
secret. Yet this is what every one would give most to know, but is
himself most backward to impart.

* * * * *

Hardly a rood of land but can show its fresh wound or indelible scar,
in proof that earlier or later man has been there.

* * * * *

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the
contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest. As the reformers
say, it is a levelling down, not up. Hence the mass is only another
name for the mob. The inhabitants of the earth assembled in one place
would constitute the greatest mob. The mob is spoken of as an insane
and blinded animal; magistrates say it must be humored; they apprehend
it may incline this way or that, as villagers dread an inundation, not
knowing whose land may be flooded, nor how many bridges carried away.

* * * * *

One goes to a cattle-show expecting to find many men and women
assembled, and beholds only working oxen and neat cattle. He goes to
a commencement thinking that there at least he may find the men of the
country; but such, if there were any, are completely merged in the day,
and have become so many walking commencements, so that he is fain to
take himself out of sight and hearing of the orator, lest he lose his
own identity in the nonentities around him.

* * * * *

But you are getting all the while further and further from true society.
Your silence was an approach to it, but your conversation is only a
refuge from the encounter of men; as though men were to be satisfied
with a meeting of heels, and not heads.

Nor is it better with private assemblies, or meetings together, with a
sociable design, of acquaintances so called,—that is to say of men and
women who are familiar with the lineaments of each other's countenances,
who eat, drink, sleep, and transact the business of living within the
circuit of a mile.

With a beating heart he fares him forth, by the light of the stars, to
this meeting of gods. But the illusion speedily vanishes; what at first
seemed to him nectar and ambrosia, is discovered to be plain bohea and
short gingerbread.

Then with what speed does he throw off his strait-jacket of a godship,
and play the one-eared, two-mouthed mortal, thus proving his title
to the epithet applied to him of old by Homer of μέροψ ἄνθρωπος, or
that possesses an articulating voice. But unfortunately we have as yet
invented no rule by which the stranger may know when he has culminated.
We read that among the Finlanders when one "has succeeded in rendering
himself agreeable, it is a custom at an assemblage for all the women
present to give him on the back a sudden slap, when it is least
expected; and the compliment is in proportion to the weight of the
blow."

* * * * *

It is provoking, when one sits waiting the assembling together of his
neighbors around his hearth, to behold merely their clay houses, for the
most part newly shingled and clapboarded, and not unfrequently with a
fresh coat of paint, trundled to his door. He has but to knock slightly
at the outer gate of one of these shingle palaces, to be assured that
the master or mistress is not at home.

After all, the field of battle possesses many advantages over the
drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive
ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one
doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least
exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.

* * * * *

The utmost nearness to which men approach each other amounts barely to
a mechanical contact. As when you rub two stones together, though they
emit an audible sound, yet do they not actually touch each other.

* * * * *

In obedience to an instinct of their nature men have pitched their
cabins and planted corn and potatoes within speaking distance of one
another, and so formed towns and villages, but they have not associated,
they have only assembled, and society has signified only a _convention_
of men.

* * * * *

When I think of a playhouse, it is as if we had not time to appreciate
the follies of the day in detail as they occur, and so devoted an hour
of our evening to laughing or crying at them in the lump. Despairing
of a more perfect intercourse, or perhaps never dreaming that such is
desirable, or at least possible, we are contented to act our part in
what deserves to be called the great farce, not drama, of life, like
pitiful and mercenary stock actors whose business it is to keep up the
semblance of a stage.

* * * * *

Our least deed, like the young of the land crab, wends its way to the
sea of cause and effect as soon as born, and makes a drop there to
eternity.

* * * * *

Let ours be like the meeting of two planets, not hastening to confound
their jarring spheres, but drawn together by the influence of a subtile
attraction, soon to roll diverse in their respective orbits, from this
their perigee, or point of nearest approach.

* * * * *

If thy neighbor hail thee to inquire how goes the world, feel thyself
put to thy trumps to return a true and explicit answer. Plant the
feet firmly, and, will he nill he, dole out to him with strict and
conscientious impartiality his modicum of a response.

* * * * *

Let not society be the element in which you swim, or are tossed about at
the mercy of the waves, but be rather a strip of firm land running out
into the sea, whose base is daily washed by the tide, but whose summit
only the spring tide can reach.

* * * * *

But after all, such a morsel of society as this will not satisfy a
man. But like those women of Malamocco and Pelestrina, who when their
husbands are fishing at sea, repair to the shore and sing their shrill
songs at evening, till they hear the voices of their husbands in reply
borne to them over the water, so go we about indefatigably, chanting
our stanza of the lay, and awaiting the response of a kindred soul out
of the distance.

THE INDIAN AXE

_April 1._ The Indian must have possessed no small share of vital energy
to have rubbed industriously stone upon stone for long months till at
length he had rubbed out an axe or pestle,—as though he had said in the
face of the constant flux of things, I at least will live an enduring
life.

FRIENDSHIP

_April 8._

I think awhile of Love, and, while I think,
Love is to me a world,
Sole meat and sweetest drink,
And close connecting link
'Tween heaven and earth.

I only know it is, not how or why,
My greatest happiness;
However hard I try,
Not if I were to die,
Can I explain.

I fain would ask my friend how it can be,
But, when the time arrives,
Then Love is more lovely
Than anything to me,
And so I'm dumb.

For, if the truth were known, Love cannot speak,
But only thinks and does;
Though surely out 't will leak
Without the help of Greek,
Or any tongue.

A man may love the truth and practice it,
Beauty he may admire,
And goodness not omit,
As much as may befit
To reverence.

But only when these three together meet,
As they always incline,
And make one soul the seat
And favorite retreat
Of loveliness;

When under kindred shape, like loves and hates
And a kindred nature,
Proclaim us to be mates,
Exposed to equal fates
Eternally;

And each may other help, and service do,
Drawing Love's bands more tight,
Service he ne'er shall rue
While one and one make two,
And two are one;

In such case only doth man fully prove,
Fully as man can do,
What power there is in Love
His inmost soul to move
Resistlessly.

* * * * *

Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side
Withstand the winter's storm,
And, spite of wind and tide,
Grow up the meadow's pride,
For both are strong.

Above they barely touch, but, undermined
Down to their deepest source,
Admiring you shall find
Their roots are intertwined
Insep'rably.

CONVERSATION

_April 15._ Thomas Fuller relates that "in Merionethshire, in Wales,
there are high mountains, whose hanging tops come so close together
that shepherds on the tops of several hills may audibly talk together,
yet will it be a day's journey for their bodies to meet, so vast is
the hollowness of the valleys betwixt them." As much may be said in a
moral sense of our intercourse in the plains, for, though we may audibly
converse together, yet is there so vast a gulf of hollowness between
that we are actually many days' journey from a veritable communication.

STEAMSHIPS

_April 24._ Men have been contriving new means and modes of motion.
Steamships have been westering during these late days and nights on
the Atlantic waves,—the fuglers of a new evolution to this generation.
Meanwhile plants spring silently by the brooksides, and the grim woods
wave indifferent; the earth emits no howl, pot on fire simmers and
seethes, and men go about their business.

THE BLUEBIRDS

_April 26._

In the midst of the poplar that stands by our door
We planted a bluebird box,
And we hoped before the summer was o'er
A transient pair to coax.

One warm summer's day the bluebirds came
And lighted on our tree,
But at first the wand'rers were not so tame
But they were afraid of me.

They seemed to come from the distant south,
Just over the Walden wood,
And they skimmed it along with open mouth
Close by where the bellows stood.

Warbling they swept round the distant cliff,
And they warbled it over the lea,
And over the blacksmith's shop in a jiff
Did they come warbling to me.

They came and sat on the box's top
Without looking into the hole,
And only from this side to that did they hop,
As 'twere a common well-pole.

Methinks I had never seen them before,
Nor indeed had they seen me,
Till I chanced to stand by our back door,
And they came to the poplar tree.

In course of time they built their nest
And reared a happy brood,
And every morn they piped their best
As they flew away to the wood.

Thus wore the summer hours away
To the bluebirds and to me,
And every hour was a summer's day,
So pleasantly lived we.

They were a world within themselves,
And I a world in me,
Up in the tree—the little elves—
With their callow family.

One morn the wind blowed cold and strong,
And the leaves went whirling away;
The birds prepared for their journey long
That raw and gusty day.

Boreas came blust'ring down from the north,
And ruffled their azure smocks,
So they launched them forth, though somewhat loth,
By way of the old Cliff rocks.

Meanwhile the earth jogged steadily on
In her mantle of purest white,
And anon another spring was born
When winter was vanished quite.

And I wandered forth o'er the steamy earth,
And gazed at the mellow sky,
But never before from the hour of my birth
Had I wandered so thoughtfully.

For never before was the earth so still,
And never so mild was the sky,
The river, the fields, the woods, and the hill
Seemed to heave an audible sigh.

I felt that the heavens were all around,
And the earth was all below,
As when in the ears there rushes a sound
Which thrills you from top to toe.

I dreamed that I was a waking thought,
A something I hardly knew,
Not a solid piece, nor an empty nought,
But a drop of morning dew.

'Twas the world and I at a game of bo-peep,
As a man would dodge his shadow,
An idea becalmed in eternity's deep,
'Tween Lima and Segraddo.

Anon a faintly warbled note
From out the azure deep
Into my ears did gently float
As is the approach of sleep.

It thrilled but startled not my soul;
Across my mind strange mem'ries gleamed,
As often distant scenes unroll
When we have lately dreamed.

The bluebird had come from the distant South
To his box in the poplar tree,
And he opened wide his slender mouth
On purpose to sing to me.

JOURNEY TO MAINE

_May 3-4._ Boston to Portland.

What, indeed, is this earth to us of New England but a field for Yankee
speculation? The Nantucket whaler goes a-fishing round it, and so knows
it,—what it is, how long, how broad, and that no tortoise sustains
it. He who has visited the confines of his real estate, looking out on
all sides into space, will feel a new inducement to _be_ the lord of
creation.

We must all pay a small tribute to Neptune; the chief engineer must once
have been seasick.

Midnight—head over the boat's side—between sleeping and waking—with
glimpses of one or more lights in the vicinity of Cape Ann. Bright
moonlight—the effect heightened by seasickness. Beyond that light yonder
have my lines hitherto been cast, but now I know that there lies not
the whole world, for I can say it is there and not here.

_May 4._ Portland. There is a proper and only right way to enter a city,
as well as to make advances to a strange person; neither will allow of
the least forwardness nor bustle. A sensitive person can hardly elbow
his way boldly, laughing and talking, into a strange town, without
experiencing some twinges of conscience, as when he has treated a
stranger with too much familiarity.

_May 5._ Portland to Bath _via_ Brunswick; Bath to Brunswick.

Each one's world is but a clearing in the forest, so much open and
inclosed ground. When the mail coach rumbles into one of these, the
villagers gaze after you with a compassionate look, as much as to say:
"Where have you been all this time, that you make your début in the
world at this late hour? Nevertheless, here we are; come and study us,
that you may learn men and manners."

_May 6._ Brunswick to Augusta _via_ Gardiner and Hallowell.

_May 7._ We occasionally meet an individual of a character and
disposition so entirely the reverse of our own that we wonder if he
can indeed be another man like ourselves. We doubt if we ever could
draw any nearer to him, and understand him. Such was the old English
gentleman whom I met with to-day in H. Though I peered in at his eyes
I could not discern myself reflected therein. The chief wonder was how
we could ever arrive at so fair-seeming an intercourse upon so small
ground of sympathy. He walked and fluttered like a strange bird at my
side, prying into and making a handle of the least circumstance. The
bustle and rapidity of our communication were astonishing; we skated
in our conversation. All at once he would stop short in the path, and,
in an abstracted air, query whether the steamboat had reached Bath or
Portland, addressing me from time to time as his familiar genius, who
could understand what was passing in his mind without the necessity of
uninterrupted oral communication.

_May 8._ Augusta to Bangor _via_ China.

_May 10._ Bangor to Oldtown.

The railroad from Bangor to Oldtown is civilization shooting off in
a tangent into the forest. I had much conversation with an old Indian
at the latter place, who sat dreaming upon a scow at the waterside and
striking his deer-skin moccasins against the planks, while his arms hung
listlessly by his side. He was the most communicative man I had met.
Talked of hunting and fishing, old times and new times. Pointing up the
Penobscot, he observed, "Two or three mile up the river one beautiful
country!" and then, as if he would come as far to meet me as I had
gone to meet him, he exclaimed, "Ugh! one very hard time!" But he had
mistaken his man.

_May 11._ Bangor to Belfast _via_ Saturday Cove.

_May 12._ Belfast.

_May 13._ To Castine by sailboat "Cinderilla [_sic_]."

_May 14._ Castine to Belfast by packet, Captain Skinner. Found the Poems
of Burns and an odd volume of the "Spectator" in the cabin.

_May 15._ Belfast to Bath _via_ Thomaston.

_May 16._ To Portland.

_May 17._ To Boston and Concord.

MAY MORNING

_May 21._

The school-boy loitered on his way to school,
Scorning to live so rare a day by rule.
So mild the air a pleasure 'twas to breathe,
For what seems heaven above was earth beneath.

Soured neighbors chatted by the garden pale,
Nor quarrelled who should drive the needed nail;
The most unsocial made new friends that day,
As when the sun shines husbandmen make hay.

How long I slept I know not, but at last
I felt my consciousness returning fast,
For Zephyr rustled past with leafy tread,
And heedlessly with one heel grazed my head.

My eyelids opened on a field of blue,
For close above a nodding violet grew;
A part of heaven it seemed, which one could scent,
Its blue commingling with the firmament.

WALDEN

_June 3._

True, our converse a stranger is to speech;
Only the practiced ear can catch the surging words
That break and die upon thy pebbled lips.
Thy flow of thought is noiseless as the lapse of thy own waters,
Wafted as is the morning mist up from thy surface,
So that the passive Soul doth breathe it in,
And is infected with the truth thou wouldst express.

E'en the remotest stars have come in troops
And stooped low to catch the benediction
Of thy countenance. Oft as the day came round,
Impartial has the sun exhibited himself
Before thy narrow skylight; nor has the moon
For cycles failed to roll this way
As oft as elsewhither, and tell thee of the night.
No cloud so rare but hitherward it stalked,
And in thy face looked doubly beautiful.
O! tell me what the winds have writ for the last thousand years
On the blue vault that spans thy flood,
Or sun transferred and delicately reprinted
For thy own private reading. Somewhat
Within these latter days I've read,
But surely there was much that would have thrilled the Soul,
Which human eye saw not.
I would give much to read that first bright page,
Wet from a virgin press, when Eurus, Boreas,
And the host of airy quill-drivers
First dipped their pens in mist.

_June 14._

Truth, Goodness, Beauty,—those celestial thrins,[32]
Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,
With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,
Its joy confesses at their recent birth.

Strange that so many fickle gods, as fickle as the weather,
Throughout Dame Nature's provinces should always pull together.

_June 16._

In the busy streets, domains of trade,
Man is a surly porter, or a vain and hectoring bully,
Who can claim no nearer kindredship with me
Than brotherhood by law.

CLIFFS

_July 8._

The loudest sound that burdens here the breeze
Is the wood's whisper; 'tis, when we choose to list,
Audible sound, and when we list not,
It is calm profound. Tongues were provided
But to vex the ear with superficial thoughts.
When deeper thoughts upswell, the jarring discord
Of harsh speech is hushed, and senses seem
As little as may be to share the ecstasy.

HEROISM

_July 13._ What a hero one can be without moving a finger! The world
is not a field worthy of us, nor can we be satisfied with the plains of
Troy. A glorious strife seems waging within us, yet so noiselessly that
we but just catch the sound of the clarion ringing of victory, borne
to us on the breeze. There are in each the seeds of a heroic ardor,
which need only to be stirred in with the _soil where they lie_, by an
inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor.[33]

SUSPICION

_July 15._ What though friends misinterpret your conduct, if it is right
in sight of God and Nature. The wrong, if there be any, pertains only to
the wrongdoer, nor is the integrity of your relations to the universe
affected, but you may gather encouragement from their mistrust. If the
friend withhold his favor, yet does greater float gratuitous on the
zephyr.

TRUTH

_Aug. 4._ Whatever of past or present wisdom has published itself to the
world, is palpable falsehood till it come and utter itself by my side.

SPHERE MUSIC

_Aug. 5._ Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then
settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon.
But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and
hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of
the former, are the true sphere music,—pure, unmixed music,—in which no
wail mingles.

DIVINE SERVICE IN THE ACADEMY HALL

In dark places and dungeons these words might perhaps strike root and
grow, but utter them in the daylight and their dusky hues are apparent.
From this window I can compare the written with the preached word:
within is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; without, grain
fields and grasshoppers, which give those the lie direct.

THE TIME OF THE UNIVERSE

_Aug. 10._ Nor can all the vanities that so vex the world alter one
whit the measure that night has chosen, but ever it must be short
particular metre. The human soul is a silent harp in God's quire,
whose strings need only to be swept by the divine breath to chime in
with the harmonies of creation. Every pulse-beat is in exact time with
the cricket's chant, and the tickings of the death-watch in the wall.
Alternate with these if you can.[34]

CONSCIOUSNESS

_Aug. 13._ If with closed ears and eyes I consult consciousness for a
moment, immediately are all walls and barriers dissipated, earth rolls
from under me, and I float, by the impetus derived from the earth and
the system, a subjective, heavily laden thought, in the midst of an
unknown and infinite sea, or else heave and swell like a vast ocean
of thought, without rock or headland, where are all riddles solved,
all straight lines making there their two ends to meet, eternity and
space gambolling familiarly through my depths. I am from the beginning,
knowing no end, no aim. No sun illumines me, for I dissolve all lesser
lights in my own intenser and steadier light. I am a restful kernel in
the magazine of the universe.

RESOURCE

Men are constantly dinging in my ears their fair theories and plausible
solutions of the universe, but ever there is no help, and I return again
to my shoreless, islandless ocean, and fathom unceasingly for a bottom
that will hold an anchor, that it may not drag.

SABBATH BELL

_Aug. 19._ The sound of the sabbath bell, whose farthest waves are
at this instant breaking on these cliffs, does not awaken pleasing
associations alone. Its muse is wonderfully condescending and
philanthropic. One involuntarily leans on his staff to humor the
unusually meditative mood. It is as the sound of many catechisms and
religious books twanging a canting peal round the world, and seems
to issue from some Egyptian temple, and echo along the shore of the
Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace and Moses in the bulrushes,
startling a multitude of storks and alligators basking in the sun. Not
so these larks and pewees of Musketaquid. One is sick at heart of this
pagoda worship. It is like the beating of gongs in a Hindoo subterranean
temple.[35]

HOLY WAR

_Aug. 21._ Passion and appetite are always an unholy land in which
one may wage most holy war. Let him steadfastly follow the banner of
his faith till it is planted on the enemy's citadel. Nor shall he lack
fields to display his valor in, nor straits worthy of him. For when he
has blown his blast, and smote those within reach, invisible enemies
will not cease to torment him, who yet may be starved out in the
garrisons where they lie.

SCRIPTURE

_Aug. 22._ How thrilling a noble sentiment in the oldest books,—in
Homer, the Zendavesta, or Confucius! It is a strain of music wafted down
to us on the breeze of time, through the aisles of innumerable ages. By
its very nobleness it is made near and audible to us.

EVENING SOUNDS

_Aug. 26._ How strangely sounds of revelry strike the ear from over
cultivated fields by the woodside, while the sun is declining in the
west. It is a world we had not known before. We listen and are capable
of no mean act or thought. We tread on Olympus and participate in the
councils of the gods.

HOMER

It does one's heart good if Homer but say the sun sets,—or, "As when
beautiful stars accompany the bright moon through the serene heavens;
and the woody hills and cliffs are discerned through the mild light,
and each star is visible, and the shepherd rejoices in his heart."[36]

THE LOSS OF A TOOTH

_Aug. 27._ Verily I am the creature of circumstances. Here I have
swallowed an indispensable tooth, and so am no whole man, but a lame
and halting piece of manhood. I am conscious of no gap in my soul, but
it would seem that, now the entrance to the oracle has been enlarged,
the more rare and commonplace the responses that issue from it. I
have felt cheap, and hardly dared hold up my head among men, ever
since this accident happened. Nothing can I do as well and freely as
before; nothing do I undertake but I am hindered and balked by this
circumstance. What a great matter a little spark kindleth! I believe if
I were called at this moment to rush into the thickest of the fight, I
should halt for lack of so insignificant a piece of armor as a tooth.
Virtue and Truth go undefended, and Falsehood and Affectation are thrown
in my teeth,—though I am toothless. One does not need that the earth
quake for the sake of excitement, when so slight a crack proves such an
impassable moat. But let the lame man shake his leg, and match himself
with the fleetest in the race. So shall he do what is in him to do. But
let him who has lost a tooth open his mouth wide and gabble, lisp, and
sputter never so resolutely.

DEFORMITY

_Aug. 29._ Here at the top of Nawshawtuct, this mild August afternoon,
I can discern no deformed thing. The prophane hay-makers in yonder
meadow are yet the hay-makers of poetry,—forsooth Faustus and Amyntas.
Yonder schoolhouse of brick, than which, near at hand, nothing can be
more mote-like to my eye, serves even to heighten the picturesqueness
of the scene. Barns and outbuildings, which in the nearness mar by their
presence the loveliness of nature, are not only endurable, but, observed
where they lie by some waving field of grain or patch of woodland, prove
a very cynosure to the pensive eye. Let man after infinite hammering
and din of crows uprear a deformity in the plain, yet will Nature have
her revenge on the hilltop. Retire a stone's throw and she will have
changed his base metal into gold.

CRICKETS

The crackling flight of grasshoppers is a luxury; and pleasant is it
when summer has once more followed in the steps of winter to hear scald
cricket piping a Nibelungenlied in the grass. It is the most infinite
of singers. Wiselier had the Greeks chosen a golden cricket, and let
the grasshopper eat grass. One opens both his ears to the invisible,
incessant quire, and doubts if it be not earth herself chanting for all
time.

GENII

In the vulgar daylight of our self-conceit, good genii are still
overlooking and conducting us; as the stars look down on us by day as
by night—and we observe them not.

SPHERE MUSIC

_Sept. 2._ The cocks chant a strain of which we never tire. Some
there are who find pleasure in the melody of birds and chirping of
crickets,—aye, even the peeping of frogs. Such faint sounds as these are
for the most part heard above the weeping and wailing and gnashing of
teeth which so unhallow the Sabbath among us. The moan the earth makes
is after all a very faint sound, infinitely inferior in volume to its
creakings of joy and gleeful murmurs; so that we may expect the next
balloonist will rise above the utmost range of discordant sounds into
the region of pure melody. Never so loud was the wail but it seemed to
taper off into a piercing melody and note of joy, which lingered not
amid the clods of the valley.

CREEDS

_Sept. 3._ The only faith that men recognize is a creed. But the true
creed which we unconsciously live by, and which rather adopts us than we
it, is quite different from the written or preached one. Men anxiously
hold fast to their creed, as to a straw, thinking this does them good
service because their sheet anchor does not drag.[37]

RIVERS

_Sept. 5._ For the first time it occurred to me this afternoon what a
piece of wonder a river is,—a huge volume of matter ceaselessly rolling
through the fields and meadows of this substantial earth, making
haste from the high places, by stable dwellings of men and Egyptian
Pyramids, to its restless reservoir. One would think that, by a very
natural impulse, the dwellers upon the headwaters of the Mississippi
and Amazon would follow in the trail of their waters to see the end of
the matter.[38]

HOMER

_Sept. 7._ When Homer's messengers repair to the tent of Achilles, we do
not have to wonder how they get there, but step by step accompany them
along the shore of the resounding sea.[39]

FLOW OF SPIRITS IN YOUTH

_Sept. 15._ How unaccountable the flow of spirits in youth. You may
throw sticks and dirt into the current, and it will only rise the
higher. Dam it up you may, but dry it up you may not, for you cannot
reach its source. If you stop up this avenue or that, anon it will come
gurgling out where you least expected and wash away all fixtures. Youth
grasps at happiness as an inalienable right. The tear does no sooner
gush than glisten. Who shall say when the tear that sprung of sorrow
first sparkled with joy?

ALMA NATURA

_Sept. 20._ It is a luxury to muse by a wall-side in the sunshine of
a September afternoon,—to cuddle down under a gray stone, and hearken
to the siren song of the cricket. Day and night seem henceforth but
accidents, and the time is always a still eventide, and as the close of
a happy day. Parched fields and mulleins gilded with the slanting rays
are my diet. I know of no word so fit to express this disposition of
Nature as Alma Natura.

COMPENSATION

_Sept. 23._ If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find
compensation in every disappointment. If a shower drives us for shelter
to the maple grove or the trailing branches of the pine, yet in their
recesses with microscopic eye we discover some new wonder in the bark,
or the leaves, or the fungi at our feet. We are interested by some
new resource of insect economy, or the chickadee is more than usually
familiar. We can study Nature's nooks and corners then.[40]

MY BOOTS

_Oct. 16._

Anon with gaping fearlessness they quaff
The dewy nectar with a natural thirst,
Or wet their leathern lungs where cranberries lurk,
With sweeter wine than Chian, Lesbian, or Falernian far.
Theirs was the inward lustre that bespeaks
An open sole—unknowing to exclude
The cheerful day—a worthier glory far
Than that which gilds the outmost rind with darkness visible—
Virtues that fast abide through lapse of years,
Rather rubbed in than off.

HOMER

_Oct. 21._ Hector hurrying from rank to rank is likened to the moon
wading in majesty from cloud to cloud. We are reminded of the hour of
the day by the fact that the woodcutter spreads now his morning meal in
the recesses of the mountains, having already laid his axe at the root
of many lofty trees.[41]

_Oct. 23._ Nestor's simple repast after the rescue of Machaon is a fit
subject for poetry. The woodcutter may sit down to his cold victuals,
the hero to soldier's fare, and the wild Arab to his dried dates and
figs, without offense; but not so a modern gentleman to his dinner.

_Oct. 24._ It matters not whether these strains originate there in the
grass or float thitherward like atoms of light from the minstrel days
of Greece.

"The snowflakes fall thick and fast on a winter's day. The winds
are lulled, and the snow falls incessant, covering the tops of the
mountains, and the hills, and the plains where the lotus tree grows, and
the cultivated fields. And they are falling by the inlets and shores of
the foaming sea, but are silently dissolved by the waves."[42]

SPECULATION

_Dec. 7._ We may believe it, but never do we live a quiet, free
life, such as Adam's, but are enveloped in an invisible network of
speculations. Our progress is only from one such speculation to another,
and only at rare intervals do we perceive that it is no progress. Could
we for a moment drop this by-play, and simply wonder, without reference
or inference!

BYRON

_Dec. 8._ Nothing in nature is sneaking or chapfallen, as somewhat
maltreated and slighted, but each is satisfied with its being, and so
is as lavender and balm. If skunk-cabbage is offensive to the nostrils
of men, still has it not drooped in consequence, but trustfully
unfolded its leaf of two hands' breadth. What was it to Lord Byron
whether England owned or disowned him, whether he smelled sour and was
skunk-cabbage to the English nostril or violet-like, the pride of the
land and ornament of every lady's boudoir? Let not the oyster grieve
that he has lost the race; he has gained as an oyster.

FAIR HAVEN[43]

_Dec. 15._

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 there below,
As that same meadow mouse doth lie
Snug underneath the snow.

And if perchance the chickadee
Lisp a faint note anon,
The snow is summer's canopy,
Which she herself put on.

Rare blossoms deck the cheerful trees,
And dazzling fruits depend,
The north wind sighs a summer breeze,
The nipping frosts to fend,

Bringing glad tidings unto me,
While that I stand all ear,
Of a serene eternity,
That need not winter fear.

Out on the silent pond straightway
The restless ice doth crack,
And pond sprites merry gambols play
Amid the deaf'ning rack.

Eager I press me to the vale
As I had heard brave news,
How nature held high festival,
Which it were hard to lose.

I crack me with my neighbor ice,
And sympathizing quake,
As each new rent darts in a trice
Across the gladsome lake.

One with the cricket in the ground,
And fuel on the hearth,
Resounds the rare domestic sound
Along the forest path.

Fair Haven is my huge tea-urn
That seethes and sings to me,
And eke the crackling fagots burn,—
A homebred minstrelsy.

SOME SCRAPS FROM AN ESSAY ON "SOUND AND SILENCE" WRITTEN IN THE LATTER
HALF OF THIS MONTH,—DECEMBER, 1838[44]

As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the
most excellent speech finally falls into silence. We go about to find
Solitude and Silence, as though they dwelt only in distant glens and the
depths of the forest, venturing out from these fastnesses at midnight.
Silence _was_, say we, before ever the world was, as if creation had
displaced her, and were not her visible framework and foil. It is only
favorite dells that she deigns to frequent, and we dream not that she is
then imported into them when we wend thither, as Selden's butcher busied
himself with looking after his knife, when he had it in his mouth. For
where man is, there is Silence.

* * * * *

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul
attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She
is audible to all men, at all times, in all places, and if we will we
may always hearken to her admonitions.

* * * * *

Silence is ever less strange than noise, lurking amid the boughs of
the hemlock or pine just in proportion as we find ourselves there. The
nuthatch, tapping the upright trunks by our side, is only a partial
spokesman for the solemn stillness.

* * * * *

She is always at hand with her wisdom, by roadsides and street corners;
lurking in belfries, the cannon's mouth, and the wake of the earthquake;
gathering up and fondling their puny din in her ample bosom.

* * * * *

Those divine sounds which are uttered to our inward ear—which are
breathed in with the zephyr or reflected from the lake—come to us
noiselessly, bathing the temples of the soul, as we stand motionless
amid the rocks.

* * * * *

The halloo is the creature of walls and mason work; the whisper is
fittest in the depths of the wood, or by the shore of the lake; but
silence is best adapted to the acoustics of space.

* * * * *

All sounds are her servants and purveyors, proclaiming not only that
their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought
after. Behind the most distinct and significant hovers always a more
significant silence which floats it. The thunder is only our signal gun,
that we may know what communion awaits us. Not its dull sound, but the
infinite expansion of our being which ensues, we praise and unanimously
name sublime.

All sound is nearly akin to Silence; it is a bubble on her surface
which straightway bursts, an emblem of the strength and prolificness
of the undercurrent. It is a faint utterance of Silence, and then
only agreeable to our auditory nerves when it contrasts itself with
the former. In proportion as it does this, and is a heightener and
intensifier of the Silence, it is harmony and purest melody.

* * * * *

Every melodious sound is the ally of Silence,—a help and not a hindrance
to abstraction.

* * * * *

Certain sounds more than others have found favor with the poets only as
foils to silence.

* * * * *

ANACREON'S ODE TO THE CICADA[45]

We pronounce thee happy, cicada,
For on the tops of the trees,
Sipping a little dew,
Like any king thou singest,
For thine are they all,
Whatever thou seest in the fields,
And whatever the woods bear.
Thou art the friend of the husbandmen,
In no respect injuring any one;
And thou art honored among men,
Sweet prophet of summer.
The Muses love thee,
And Phœbus himself loves thee,
And has given thee a shrill song;
Age does not wrack thee,
Thou skillful, earth-born, song-loving,
Unsuffering, bloodless one;
Almost thou art like the gods.

* * * * *

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel of all dry discourses and
all foolish acts, as balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety
as [after] disappointment; that background which the painter may not
daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure he
may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum.

* * * * *

With what equanimity does the silent consider how his world goes,
settles the awards of virtue and justice, is slandered and buffeted
never so much and views it all as a phenomenon. He is one with Truth,
Goodness, Beauty. No indignity can assail him, no personality disturb
him.

* * * * *

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when
most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his
audience.

* * * * *

Who has not hearkened to her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking
trumpet, which every man carries slung over his shoulder, and when he
will may apply to his ear. She is the sole oracle, the true Delphi and
Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will
they be balked by an ambiguous answer. Through her have all revelations
been made. Just as far as men have consulted her oracle, they have
obtained a clear insight, and their age been marked for an enlightened
one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to a strange Delphi
and her mad priestess, they have been benighted, and their age Dark or
Leaden.—These are garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any
sound; but the Grecian, or _silent_ and melodious, Era is ever sounding
on the ears of men.

* * * * *

A good book is the plectrum with which our silent lyres are struck. In
all epics, when, after breathless attention, we come to the significant
words "He said," then especially our inmost man is addressed. We not
unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own unwritten
sequel to the written and comparatively lifeless page. Of all valuable
books this same sequel makes an indispensable part. It is the author's
aim to say once and emphatically, "He said." This is the most the
bookmaker can attain to. If he make his volume a foil whereon the
waves of silence may break, it is well. It is not so much the sighing
of the blast as that pause, as Gray expresses it, "when the gust is
recollecting itself," that thrills us, and is infinitely grander than
the importunate howlings of the storm.

* * * * *

At evening Silence sends many emissaries to me, some navigating the
subsiding waves which the village murmur has agitated.

* * * * *

It were vain for me to interpret the Silence. She cannot be done into
English. For six thousand years have men translated her, with what
fidelity belonged to each; still is she little better than a sealed
book. A man may run on confidently for a time, thinking he has her under
his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too must at last be
silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning he made; for, when
he at length dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the told
to the untold that the former will seem but the bubble on the surface
where he disappeared.

* * * * *

Nevertheless will we go on, like those Chinese cliff swallows,
feathering our nests with the froth, so they may one day be bread of
life to such as dwell by the seashore.

ANACREONTICS

RETURN OF SPRING[46]

_Dec. 23._

Behold, how, spring appearing,
The Graces send forth roses;
Behold, how the wave of the sea
Is made smooth by the calm;
Behold, how the duck dives;
Behold, how the crane travels;
And Titan shines constantly bright.
The shadows of the clouds are moving;
The works of man shine;
The earth puts forth fruits;
The fruit of the olive puts forth.
The cup of Bacchus is crowned.
Along the leaves, along the branches,
The fruit, bending them down, flourishes.

CUPID WOUNDED[47]

Love once among roses
A sleeping bee
Did not see, but was stung;
And, being wounded in the finger
Of his hand, cried for pain.
Running as well as flying
To the beautiful Venus,
I am killed, mother, said he,
I am killed, and I die.
A little serpent has stung me,
Winged, which they call
A bee,—the husbandmen.
And she said, If the sting
Of a bee afflicts you,
How, think you, are they afflicted,
Love, whom you smite?

[_Dated only 1838._] Sometimes I hear the veery's silver clarion, or the
brazen note of the impatient jay, or in secluded woods the chickadee
doles out her scanty notes, which sing the praise of heroes, and set
forth the loveliness of virtue evermore.—_Phe-be._[48]

III

1839

(ÆT. 21-22)

THE THAW[49]

_Jan. 11._

I saw the civil sun drying earth's tears,
Her tears of joy, that only faster flowed.

Fain would I stretch me by the highway-side,
To thaw and trickle with the melting snow,
That, mingled soul and body with the tide,
I too may through the pores of nature flow.

But I, alas, nor trickle can nor fume,
One jot to forward the great work of Time,
'Tis mine to hearken while these ply the loom,
So shall my silence with their music chime.

THE DREAM VALLEY

_Jan. 20._ The prospect of our river valley from Tahatawan Cliff
appeared to me again in my dreams.

Last night, as I lay gazing with shut eyes
Into the golden land of dreams,
I thought I gazed adown a quiet reach
Of land and water prospect,
Whose low beach
Was peopled with the now subsiding hum
Of happy industry, whose work is done.

And as I turned me on my pillow o'er,
I heard the lapse of waves upon the shore,
Distinct as it had been at broad noonday,
And I were wandering at Rockaway.

LOVE

We two that planets erst had been
Are now a double star,
And in the heavens may be seen,
Where that we fixèd are.

Yet, whirled with subtle power along,
Into new space we enter,
And evermore with spheral song
Revolve about one centre.

_Feb. 3._

The deeds of king and meanest hedger
Stand side by side in heaven's ledger.

* * * * *

'Twill soon appear if we but look
At evening into earth's day-book,
Which way the great account doth stand
Between the heavens and the land.

THE EVENING WIND

The eastern mail comes lumbering in,
With outmost waves of Europe's din;
The western sighs adown the slope,
Or 'mid the rustling leaves doth grope,
Laden with news from Californ',
Whate'er transpired hath since morn,
How wags the world by brier and brake,
From hence to Athabasca lake.[50]

POETIZING

_Feb. 8._ When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and scratch with our
pen, delighting, like the cock, in the dust we make, but do not detect
where the jewel lies, which perhaps we have in the meantime cast to a
distance, or quite covered up again.[51]

_Feb. 9._ It takes a man to make a room silent.

THE PEAL OF THE BELLS[52]

_Feb. 10._

When the world grows old by the chimney-side,
Then forth to the youngling rocks I glide,
Where over the water, and over the land,
The bells are booming on either hand.

Now up they go ding, then down again dong,
And awhile they swing to the same old song,
And the metal goes round at a single bound,
A-lulling the fields with its measured sound,
Till the tired tongue falls with a lengthened boom
As solemn and loud as the crack of doom.

Then changed is their measure to tone upon tone,
And seldom it is that one sound comes alone,
For they ring out their peals in a mingled throng,
And the breezes waft the loud ding-dong along.

When the echo has reached me in this lone vale,
I am straightway a hero in coat of mail,
I tug at my belt and I march on my post,
And feel myself more than a match for a host.

I am on the alert for some wonderful Thing
Which somewhere 's a-taking place;
'Tis perchance the salute which our planet doth ring
When it meeteth another in space.

THE SHRIKE

_Feb. 25._

Hark! hark! from out the thickest fog
Warbles with might and main
The fearless shrike, as all agog
To find in fog his gain.

His steady sails he never furls
At any time o' year,
And, perched now on Winter's curls,
He whistles in his ear.[53]

THE POET

_March 3._ He must be something more than natural,—even supernatural.
Nature will not speak through but along with him. His voice will
not proceed from her midst, but, breathing on her, will make her the
expression of his thought. He then poetizes when he takes a fact out
of nature into spirit. He speaks without reference to time or place.
His thought is one world, hers another. He is another Nature,—Nature's
brother. Kindly offices do they perform for one another. Each publishes
the other's truth.

MORNING

_April 4._ The atmosphere of morning gives a healthy hue to our
prospects. Disease is a sluggard that overtakes, never encounters,
us. We have the start each day, and may fairly distance him before the
dew is off; but if we recline in the bowers of noon, he will come up
with us after all. The morning dew breeds no cold. We enjoy a diurnal
reprieve in the beginning of each day's creation. In the morning we do
not believe in expediency; we will start afresh, and have no patching,
no temporary fixtures. The afternoon man has an interest in the past;
his eye is divided, and he sees indifferently well either way.

DRIFTING

Drifting in a sultry day on the sluggish waters of the pond, I almost
cease to live and begin to be. A boatman stretched on the deck of his
craft and dallying with the noon would be as apt an emblem of eternity
for me as the serpent with his tail in his mouth. I am never so prone
to lose my identity. I am dissolved in the haze.

DISAPPOINTMENT

_April 7. Sunday._ The tediousness and detail of execution never occur
to the genius projecting; it always antedates the completion of its
work. It condescends to give time a few hours to do its bidding in.

RESOLVE

Most have sufficient contempt for what is mean to resolve that they will
abstain from it, and a few virtue enough to abide by their resolution,
but not often does one attain to such lofty contempt as to require no
resolution to be made.

THE TEAMSTER

_April 8._ There goes a six-horse team, and a man by its side. He
has rolled out of his cradle into a Tom-and-Jerry, and goes about his
business while Nature goes about hers, without standing agape at his
condition. As though sixty years were not enough for these things! What
have death, and the cholera, and the immortal destiny of man, to do
with the shipping interests? There is an unexplained bravery in this.
What with bare astonishment one would think that man had his hands
full for so short a term. But this is no drawback on the lace-working
and cap-making interests. Some attain to such a degree of sang-froid
and nonchalance as to be weavers of toilet cushions and manufacturers
of pinheads, without once flinching or the slightest affection of the
nerves, for the period of a natural life.[54]

FAT PINE FOR SPEARING

_April 9._ Fat roots of pine lying in rich veins as of gold or silver,
even in old pastures where you would least expect it, make you realize
that you live in the youth of the world, and you begin to know the
wealth of the planet. Human nature is still in its prime, then. Bring
axe, pickaxe, and shovel, and tap the earth here where there is most
sap. The marrowy store gleams like some vigorous sinew, and you feel a
new suppleness in your own limbs. These are the traits that conciliate
man's moroseness, and make him civil to his fellows; every such pine
root is a pledge of suavity. If he can discover absolute barrenness in
any direction there will be some excuse for peevishness.

SOCIETY

_April 14._ There is a _terra firma_ in society as well as in geography,
some whose ports you may make by dead reckoning in all weather. All the
rest are but floating and fabulous Atlantides which sometimes skirt the
western horizon of our intercourse. They impose only on seasick mariners
who have put into some Canary Island on the frontiers of society.

CIRCUMSTANCES

_April 24._ Why should we concern ourselves with what has happened to
us, and the unaccountable fickleness of events, and not rather [with]
how we have happened to the universe, and it has demeaned itself in
consequence? Let us record in each case the judgment we have awarded to
circumstances.

ACQUAINTANCE

Cheap persons will stand upon ceremony, because there is no other
ground; but to the great of the earth we need no introduction, nor do
they need any to us.

THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH

_April 25._ If we see the reality in things, of what moment is the
superficial and apparent? Take the earth and all the interests it
has known,—what are they beside one deep surmise that pierces and
scatters them? The independent beggar disposes of all with one hearty,
significant curse by the roadside. 'Tis true they are not worth a
"tinker's damn."

PICTURE

_April 30._ Of some illuminated pictures which I saw last evening, one
representing the plain of Babylon, with only a heap of brick-dust in
the centre, and an uninterrupted horizon bounding the desert, struck
me most. I would see painted a boundless expanse of desert, prairie,
or sea, without other object than the horizon. The heavens and the
earth,—the first and last painting,—where is the artist who shall
undertake it?

_May 11._ The farmer keeps pace with his crops and the revolutions of
the seasons, but the merchant with the fluctuations of trade. Observe
how differently they walk in the streets.

VICE AND VIRTUE

_May 16._ Virtue is the very heart and lungs of vice: it cannot stand
up but it lean on virtue.

* * * * *

Who has not admired the twelve labors? And yet nobody thinks if Hercules
had sufficient motive for racking his bones to that degree. Men are not
so much virtuous as patrons of virtue, and every one knows that it is
easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than the temporary
guardian of it.

THE FORM OF STRENGTH

_May 17._ We say justly that the weak person is flat; for, like all flat
substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is
on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides
all the way through life. Most things are strong in one direction,—a
straw longitudinally, a board in the direction of its edge, a knee
transversely to its grain,—but the brave man is a perfect sphere, which
cannot fall on its flat side, and is equally strong every way. The
coward is wretchedly spheroidal at best, too much educated or drawn out
on one side commonly and depressed on the other; or he may be likened to
a hollow sphere, whose disposition of matter is best when the greatest
bulk is intended.[55]

SELF-CULTURE

_May 21._ Who knows how incessant a surveillance a strong man may
maintain over himself,—how far subject passion and appetite to reason,
and lead the life his imagination paints? Well has the poet said,—

"By manly mind Not e'en in sleep is will resigned."

By a strong effort may he not command even his brute body in unconscious
moments?

MY ATTIC

_June 4._ I sit here this fourth of June, looking out on men and nature
from this that I call my perspective window, through which all things
are seen in their true relations. This is my upper empire, bounded by
four walls, viz., three of boards yellow-washed, facing the north,
west, and south, respectively, and the fourth of plaster, likewise
yellow-washed, fronting the sunrise,—to say nothing of the purlieus and
outlying provinces, unexplored as yet but by rats.

* * * * *

The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like
burs.

RENCOUNTER

_June 22. Saturday._ I have within the last few days come into contact
with a pure, uncompromising spirit, that is somewhere wandering in the
atmosphere, but settles not positively anywhere. Some persons carry
about them the air and conviction of virtue, though they themselves are
unconscious of it, and are even backward to appreciate it in others.
Such it is impossible not to love; still is their loveliness, as it
were, independent of them, so that you seem not to lose it when they are
absent, for when they are near it is like an invisible presence which
attends you.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much
only as we possess.

SYMPATHY[56]

_June 24._

Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould,
As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
But after manned him for her own stronghold.

On every side he open was as day,
That you might see no lack of strength within,
For walls and ports do only serve alway
For a pretense to feebleness and sin.

Say not that Cæsar was victorious,
With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame;
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came.

No strength went out to get him victory,
When all was income of its own accord;
For where he went none other was to see,
But all were parcel of their noble lord.

He forayed like the subtle haze of summer,
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes,
And revolutions works without a murmur,
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.

So was I taken unawares by this,
I quite forgot my homage to confess;
Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,
I might have loved him, had I loved him less.

Each moment, as we nearer drew to each,
A stern respect withheld us farther yet,
So that we seemed beyond each other's reach,
And less acquainted than when first we met.

We two were one while we did sympathize,
So could we not the simplest bargain drive;
And what avails it now that we are wise,
If absence doth this doubleness contrive?

Eternity may not the chance repeat,
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.

The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
For elegy has other subject none;
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
Knell of departure from that other one.

Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;
With fitting strain resound, ye woods and fields;
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me
Than all the joys other occasion yields.

Is't then too late the damage to repair?
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.

If I but love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be truest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.

THE "BOOK OF GEMS"

_July 4._

With cunning plates the polished leaves were decked,
Each one a window to the poet's world,
So rich a prospect that you might suspect
In that small space all paradise unfurled.

It was a right delightful road to go,
Marching through pastures of such fair herbage,
O'er hill and dale it led, and to and fro,
From bard to bard, making an easy stage;

Where ever and anon I slaked my thirst
Like a tired traveller at some poet's well,
Which from the teeming ground did bubbling burst,
And tinkling thence adown the page it fell.
Still through the leaves its music you might hear,
Till other springs fell faintly on the ear.

ANNURSNACK

_July 11._ At length we leave the river and take to the road which leads
to the hilltop, if by any means we may spy out what manner of earth
we inhabit. East, west, north, and south, it is farm and parish, this
world of ours. One may see how at convenient, eternal intervals men
have settled themselves, without thought for the universe. How little
matters it all they have built and delved there in the valley! It is
after all but a feature in the landscape. Still the vast impulse of
nature breathes over all. The eternal winds sweep across the interval
_to-day_, bringing mist and haze to shut out their works. Still the crow
caws from Nawshawtuct to Annursnack, as no feeble tradesman nor smith
may do. And in all swamps the hum of mosquitoes drowns this modern hum
of industry.

[Illustration: _View from Annursnack Hill_]

EVERY MAN IS A ROMAN FORUM

All things are up and down, east and west, to _me_. In me is the forum
out of which go the Appian and Sacred ways, and a thousand beside, to
the ends of the world. If I forget my centralness, and say a bean winds
with or against the _sun_, and not right or left, it will not be true
south of the equator.

THE ASSABET

_July 18._

Up this pleasant stream let's row
For the livelong summer's day,
Sprinkling foam where'er we go
In wreaths as white as driven snow.
Ply the oars! away! away![57]

Now we glide along the shore,
Chucking lilies as we go,
While the yellow-sanded floor
Doggedly resists the oar,
Like some turtle dull and slow.

Now we stem the middle tide,
Plowing through the deepest soil;
Ridges pile on either side,
While we through the furrow glide,
Reaping bubbles for our toil.

Dew before and drought behind,
Onward all doth seem to fly;
Naught contents the eager mind,
Only rapids now are kind,
Forward are the earth and sky.

Sudden music strikes the ear,
Leaking out from yonder bank,
Fit such voyagers to cheer.
Sure there must be Naiads here,
Who have kindly played this prank.

There I know the cunning pack
Where yon self-sufficient rill
All its telltale hath kept back,
Through the meadows held its clack,
And now bubbleth its fill.

Silent flows the parent stream,
And if rocks do lie below
Smothers with her waves the din,
As it were a youthful sin,
Just as still and just as slow.

But this gleeful little rill,
Purling round its storied pebble,
Tinkles to the selfsame tune
From December until June,
Nor doth any drought enfeeble.

See the sun behind the willows,
Rising through the golden haze,
How he gleams along the billows,
Their white crests the easy pillows
Of his dew-besprinkled rays.

Forward press we to the dawning,
For Aurora leads the way,
Sultry noon and twilight scorning;
In each dewdrop of the morning
Lies the promise of a day.

Rivers from the sun do flow,
Springing with the dewy morn;
Voyageurs 'gainst time do row,
Idle noon nor sunset know,
Ever even with the dawn.[58]

Since that first "Away! away!"
Many a lengthy league we've rowed,
Still the sparrow on the spray
Hastes to usher in the day
With her simple stanza'd ode.[59]

THE BREEZE'S INVITATION

_July 20._

Come let's roam the breezy pastures,
Where the freest zephyrs blow,
Batten on the oak tree's rustle,
And the pleasant insect bustle,
Dripping with the streamlet's flow.

What if I no wings do wear,
Thro' this solid-seeming air
I can skim like any swallow;
Whoso dareth let her follow,
And we'll be a jovial pair.

Like two careless swifts let's sail,
Zephyrus shall think for me;
Over hill and over dale,
Riding on the easy gale,
We will scan the earth and sea.

Yonder see that willow tree
Winnowing the buxom air;
You a gnat and I a bee,
With our merry minstrelsy
We will make a concert there.

One green leaf shall be our screen,
Till the sun doth go to bed,
I the king and you the queen
Of that peaceful little green,
Without any subject's aid.

To our music Time will linger,
And earth open wide her ear,
Nor shall any need to tarry
To immortal verse to marry
Such sweet music as he'll hear.

_July 24._

Nature doth have her dawn each day,
But mine are far between;
Content, I cry, for, sooth to say,
Mine brightest are, I ween.

For when my sun doth deign to rise,
Though it be her noontide,
Her fairest field in shadow lies,
Nor can my light abide.

Sometimes I bask me in her day,
Conversing with my mate;
But if we interchange one ray,
Forthwith her heats abate.

Through his discourse I climb and see,
As from some eastern hill,
A brighter morrow rise to me
Than lieth in her skill.

As't were two summer days in one,
Two Sundays come together,
Our rays united make one sun,
With fairest summer weather.[60]

_July 25._ There is no remedy for love but to love more.

_Aug. 31._ Made seven miles, and moored our boat on the west side of a
little rising ground which in the spring forms an island in the river,
the sun going down on one hand, and our eminence contributing its shadow
to the night on the other.[61] In the twilight so elastic is the air
that the sky seems to tinkle [_sic_] over farmhouse and wood. Scrambling
up the bank of our _terra incognita_ we fall on huckleberries, which
have slowly ripened here, husbanding the juices which the months have
distilled, for our peculiar use this night.[62] If they had been rank
poison, the entire simplicity and confidence with which we plucked them
would have insured their wholesomeness. The devout attitude of the hour
asked a blessing on that repast. It was fit for the setting sun to rest
on.

* * * * *

From our tent here on the hillside, through that isosceles door, I see
our lonely mast on the shore, it may be as an eternity fixture, to be
seen in landscapes henceforth, or as the most temporary standstill of
time, the boat just come to anchor, and the mast still rocking to find
its balance.[63]

* * * * *

No human life is in night,—the woods, the boat, the shore,—yet is it
lifelike.[64] The warm pulse of a young life beats steadily underneath
all. This slight wind is where one artery approaches the surface and is
skin deep.

* * * * *

While I write here, I hear the foxes trotting about me over the dead
leaves, and now gently over the grass, as if not to disturb the dew
which is falling. Why should we not cultivate neighborly relations with
the foxes? As if to improve upon our seeming advances, comes one to
greet us nosewise under our tent-curtain. Nor do we rudely repulse him.
Is man powder and the fox flint and steel? Has not the time come when
men and foxes shall lie down together?

* * * * *

Hist! there, the musquash by the boat is taking toll of potatoes and
melons. Is not this the age of a community of goods? His presumption
kindles in me a brotherly feeling. Nevertheless. I get up to
reconnoitre, and tread stealthily along the shore to make acquaintance
with him. But on the riverside I can see only the stars reflected in the
water, and now, by some ripple ruffling the disk of a star, I discover
him.

* * * * *

In the silence of the night the sound of a distant alarm bell is borne
to these woods. Even now men have fires and extinguish them, and, with
distant horizon blazings and barking of dogs, enact the manifold drama
of life.[65]

* * * * *

We begin to have an interest in sun, moon, and stars. What time
riseth Orion? Which side the pole gropeth the bear? East, West,
North, and South,—where are they? What clock shall tell the hours for
us?—Billerica, midnight.

_Sept. 1. Sunday._ Under an oak on the bank of the canal in Chelmsford.

From Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house the river is a noble stream
of water, flowing between gentle hills and occasional cliffs, and well
wooded all the way. It can hardly be said to flow at all, but rests
in the lap of the hills like a quiet lake. The boatmen call it a dead
stream. For many long reaches you can see nothing to indicate that men
inhabit its banks.[66] Nature seems to hold a sabbath herself to-day,—a
still warm sun on river and wood, and not breeze enough to ruffle the
water. Cattle stand up to their bellies in the river, and you think
Rembrandt should be here.

Camped under some oaks in Tyngsboro, on the east bank of the Merrimack,
just below the ferry.[67]

_Sept. 2._ Camped in Merrimack, on the west bank, by a deep ravine.[68]

_Sept. 3._ In Bedford, on the west bank, opposite a large rock, above
Coos Falls.[69]

_Sept. 4. Wednesday._ Hooksett, east bank, two or three miles below the
village, opposite Mr. Mitchel's.[70]

_Sept. 5._ Walked to Concord [N. H.], 10 miles.[71]

_Sept. 6._ By stage to Plymouth, 40 miles, and on foot to Tilton's inn,
Thornton. The scenery commences on Sanbornton Square, whence the White
Mountains are first visible. In Campton it is decidedly mountainous.

_Sept. 7._ Walked from Thornton through Peeling[72] and Lincoln to
Franconia. In Lincoln visited Stone Flume and Basin, and in Franconia
the Notch, and saw the Old Man of the Mountain.

_Sept. 8._ Walked from Franconia to Thomas J. Crawford's.

_Sept. 9._ At Crawford's.

_Sept. 10._ Ascended the mountain and rode to Conway.

_Sept. 11._ Rode to Concord.

_Sept. 12._ Rode to Hooksett and rowed to Bedford, N. H., or rather to
the northern part of Merrimack, near the ferry, by a large island, near
which we camped.[73]

_Sept 13._ Rowed and sailed to Concord, about 50 miles.[74]

THE WISE REST

_Sept 17._ Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even
pace. The bud swells imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as
though the short spring days were an eternity.[75] All her operations
seem separately, for the time, the single object for which all things
tarry. Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity
were allotted for the least deed? Let him consume never so many æons,
so that he go about the meanest task well, though it be but the paring
of his nails.[76] If the setting sun seems to hurry him to improve the
day while it lasts, the chant of the crickets fails not to reassure him,
even-measured as of old, teaching him to take his own time henceforth
forever. The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each
moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole
body at each step, while others never relax the muscles of the leg till
the accumulated fatigue obliges them to stop short.

As the wise is not anxious that time wait for him, neither does he wait
for it.

_Oct 22._ Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to
lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of
its plain.[77]

ÆSCHYLUS

_Nov. 5._ There was one man lived his own healthy Attic life in those
days. The words that have come down to us evidence that their speaker
was a seer in his day and generation. At this day they owe nothing to
their dramatic form, nothing to stage machinery, and the fact that they
were spoken under these or those circumstances. All display of art for
the gratification of a factitious taste is silently passed by to come
at the least particle of absolute and genuine thought they contain. The
reader will be disappointed, however, who looks for traits of a rare
wisdom or eloquence, and will have to solace himself, for the most part,
with the poet's humanity and what it was in him to say. He will discover
that, like every genius, he was a solitary liver and worker in his day.

We are accustomed to say that the common sense of this age belonged to
the seer of the last,—as if time gave him any vantage ground. But not
so: I see not but Genius must ever take an equal start, and all the
generations of men are virtually at a standstill for it to come and
consider of them. Common sense is not so familiar with any truth but
Genius will represent it in a strange light to it. Let the seer bring
down his broad eye to the most stale and trivial fact, and he will make
you believe it a new planet in the sky.

As to criticism, man has never to make allowance to man; there is naught
to excuse, naught to bear in mind.

All the past is here present to be tried; let it approve itself if it
can.

GROWTH

We are not apt to remember that we grow. It is curious to reflect how
the maiden waiteth patiently, confiding as the unripe houstonia of the
meadow, for the slow moving years to work their will with her,—perfect
and ripen her,—like it to be fanned by the wind, watered by the rain,
and receive her education at the hands of nature.

These young buds of manhood in the streets are like buttercups in the
meadows,—surrendered to nature as they.

_Nov. 7._ I was not aware till to-day of a rising and risen generation.
Children appear to me as raw as the fresh fungi on a fence rail. By
what degrees of consanguinity is this succulent and rank-growing slip
of manhood related to me? What is it but another herb, ranging all the
kingdoms of nature, drawing in sustenance by a thousand roots and fibres
from all soils.

LACONICISM

_Nov. 8._ Prometheus' answer to Io's question, who has bound him to the
rock, is a good instance:—

Βούλουμα μὲν τὸ δῖον, Ἡφαίστου δὲ χείρ.

(The will indeed of Zeus, of Vulcan the hand.)

Also:—

Πταίσας δὲ τῷδε πρὸς κακῷ, μαθήσεται,
Ὅσον τό, τ᾽ ἄρχειν καὶ τὸ δουλούειν δίχα.

Such naked speech is the standing aside of words to make room for
thoughts.

REGRET

_Nov. 13._ Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow,
but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral
interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. By so doing you will be
astonished to find yourself restored once more to all your emoluments.

DESPONDENCY

_Nov. 14._ There is nowhere any apology for despondency. Always there is
life which, rightly lived, implies a divine satisfaction. I am soothed
by the rain-drops on the door-sill; every globule that pitches thus
confidently from the eaves to the ground is my life insurance. Disease
and a rain-drop cannot coexist. The east wind is not itself consumptive,
but has enjoyed a rare health from of old. If a fork or brand stand
erect, good is portended by it. They are the warrant of universal
innocence.

FAREWELL

_Nov. 19._

Light-hearted, thoughtless, shall I take my way,
When I to thee this being have resigned,
Well knowing where, upon a future day,
With us'rer's craft more than myself to find.

LINNÆUS

_Nov. 22._ Linnæus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his "comb" and
"spare shirt," "leather breeches," and "gauze cap to keep off gnats,"
with as much complacency as Buonaparte would a park of artillery to be
used in the Russian Campaign. His eye is to take in fish, flower, and
bird, quadruped and biped. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable.
These facts have even a _novel_ interest.[78]

_Nov. 29._ Many brave men have there been, thank Fortune, but I shall
never grow brave by comparison. When I remember myself I shall forget
them.

BRAVERY

_Dec. 2._ A rare landscape immediately suggests a suitable inhabitant,
whose breath shall be its wind, whose moods its seasons, and to whom
it will always be fair. To be chafed and worried, and not as serene as
Nature, does not become one whose nature is as steadfast as she. We do
all stand in the front ranks of the battle every moment of our lives;
where there is a brave man there is the thickest of the fight, there
the post of honor. Not he who procures a substitute to go to Florida is
exempt from service; he gathers his laurels in another field. Waterloo
is not the only battle-ground: as many and fatal guns are pointed at my
breast now as are contained in the English arsenals.

NOON

[_Undated._][79]

Straightway dissolved,
Like to the morning mists—or rather like the subtler mists of noon—
Stretched I far up the neighboring mountain's sides,
Adown the valleys, through the nether air,
Bathing, with fond expansiveness of soul,
The tiniest blade as the sublimest cloud.

What time the bittern, solitary bird,
Hides now her head amid the whispering fern,
And not a paddock vexes all the shore,
Nor feather ruffles the incumbent air,
Save where the wagtail interrupts the noon.

FROM A CHAPTER ON BRAVERY.—_Script_

_Dec._ Bravery deals not so much in resolute action, as in healthy
and assured rest. Its palmy state is a staying at home, and compelling
alliance in all directions.[80]

The brave man never heareth the din of war; he is trustful and
unsuspecting, so observant of the least trait of good or beautiful that,
if you turn toward him the dark side of anything, he will still see only
the bright.

* * * * *

One moment of serene and confident life is more glorious than a whole
campaign of daring. We should be ready for all issues, not daring to
die but daring to live. To the brave even danger is an ally.

* * * * *

In their unconscious daily life all are braver than they know. Man
slumbers and wakes in his twilight with the confidence of noonday; he is
not palsied nor struck dumb by the inexplicable riddle of the universe.
A mere surveyor's report or clause in a preëmption bill contains matter
of quite extraneous interest, of a subdued but confident tone, evincing
such a steadiness in the writer as would have done wonders at Bunker's
Hill or Marathon. Where there is the collected eye, there will not fail
the effective hand; χεὶρ δ᾽ ὁρᾷ τὸ δράσιμον.

* * * * *

Science is always brave, for to know is to know good; doubt and danger
quail before her eye. What the coward overlooks in his hurry, she calmly
scrutinizes, breaking ground like a pioneer for the array of arts in
her train. Cowardice is unscientific, for there cannot be a science
of ignorance. There may be a science of war, for that advances, but
a retreat is rarely well conducted; if it is, then is it an orderly
advance in the face of circumstances.[81]

* * * * *

If his fortune deserts him, the brave man in pity still abides by her.
Samuel Johnson and his friend Savage, compelled by poverty to pass the
night in the streets, resolve that they will stand by their country.

* * * * *

The state of complete manhood is virtue, and virtue and bravery are
one. This truth has long been in the languages. All the relations of
the subject are hinted at in the derivation and analogies of the Latin
words _vir_ and _virtus_, and the Greek ἀγαθός and ἄριστος. Language
in its settled form is the record of men's second thoughts, a more
faithful utterance than they can momentarily give. What men say is so
sifted and obliged to approve itself as answering to a common want,
that nothing absolutely frivolous obtains currency in the language. The
analogies of words are never whimsical and meaningless, but stand for
real likenesses. Only the ethics of mankind, and not of any particular
man, give point and vigor to our speech.

* * * * *

The coward was born one day too late, for he has never overtaken the
present hour. He is the younger son of creation, who now waiteth till
the elder decease.[82] He does not dwell on the earth as though he had
a deed of the land in his pocket,—not as another lump of nature, as
imperturbable an occupant as the stones in the field. He has only rented
a few acres of time and space, and thinks that every accident portends
the expiration of his lease. He is a non-proprietor, a serf, in his
moral economy nomadic, having no fixed abode. When danger appears, he
goes abroad and clings to straws.

* * * * *

Bravery and Cowardice are kindred correlatives with Knowledge and
Ignorance, Light and Darkness, Good and Evil.

* * * * *

If you let a single ray of light through the shutter, it will go on
diffusing itself without limit till it enlighten the world, but the
shadow that was never so wide at first as rapidly contracts till it
comes to naught. The shadow of the moon when it passes nearest the sun
is lost in space ere it can reach our earth to eclipse it. Always the
_system_ shines with uninterrupted light, for, as the sun is so much
larger than any planet, no shadow can travel far into space. We may
bask always in the light of the system, always may step back out of
the shade. No man's shadow is as large as his body, if the rays make a
right angle with the reflecting surface. Let our lives be passed under
the equator, with the sun in the meridian.

There is no ill which may not be dissipated like the dark, if you let
in a stronger light upon it. Overcome evil with good. Practice no such
narrow economy as they whose bravery amounts to no more light than a
farthing candle, before which most objects cast a shadow wider than
themselves.[83]

* * * * *

It was a conceit of Plutarch, accounting for the preferences given
to signs observed on the left hand, that men may have thought "things
terrestrial and mortal directly over against heavenly and divine things,
and do conjecture that the things which to us are on the left hand,
the gods send down from their right hand."[84] If we are not blind, we
shall see how a right hand is stretched over all, as well the unlucky
as lucky, and that the ordering soul is only right-handed, distributing
with one palm all our fates.[85]

* * * * *

Men have made war from a deeper instinct than peace. War is but the
compelling of peace.[86]

When the world is declared under martial law, every Esau retakes his
birthright, and what there is in him does not fail to appear. He wipes
off all old scores and commences a new account. The world is interested
to know how any soul will demean itself in so novel a position. But when
war too, like commerce and husbandry, gets to be a routine, and men go
about it as indented apprentices, the hero degenerates into a marine,
and the standing army into a standing jest.

* * * * *

No pains are spared to do honor to the brave soldier. All guilds and
corporations are taxed to provide him with fit harness and equipment.
His coat must be red as the sunset, or blue as the heavens. Gold
or silver, pinchbeck or copper, solid or superficial, mark him for
fortune's favorite. The skill of a city enchases and tempers his
sword-blade; the Tyrian dye confounds him with emperors and kings.
Wherever he goes, music precedes and prepares the way for him. His life
is a holiday, and the contagion of his example unhinges the universe.
The world puts by work and comes out to stare. He is the one only man.
He recognizes no time-honored casts and conventions, no fixtures but
transfixtures, no governments at length settled on a permanent basis.
One tap of the drum sets the political and moral harmonies all ajar.
His ethics may well bear comparison with the priest's. He may rally,
charge, retreat in an orderly manner, but never flee nor flinch.[87]

Each more melodious note I hear
Brings sad reproach to me,
That I alone afford the ear,
Who would the music be.[88]

The brave man is the sole patron of music;[89] he recognizes it for his
mother-tongue,—a more mellifluous and articulate language than words,
in comparison with which speech is recent and temporary. It is his
voice. His language must have the same majestic movement and cadence
that philosophy assigns to the heavenly bodies. The steady flux of his
thought constitutes time in music. The universe falls in and keeps pace
with it, which before proceeded singly and discordant. Hence are poetry
and song. When Bravery first grew afraid and went to war, it took music
along with it. The soul delighted still to hear the echo of its own
voice. Especially the soldier insists on agreement and harmony always.
Indeed, it is that friendship there is in war that makes it chivalrous
and heroic. It was the dim sentiment of a noble friendship for the
purest soul the world has seen, that gave to Europe a crusading era.[90]

* * * * *

The day of tilts and tournaments has gone by, but no herald summons us
to the tournament of love.

* * * * *

The brave warrior must have harmony if not melody at any sacrifice.
Consider what shifts he makes. There are the bagpipe, the gong, the
trumpet, the drum,—either the primitive central African or Indian, or
the brass European. Ever since Jericho fell down before a blast of rams'
horns, the martial and musical have gone hand in hand. If the soldier
marches to the sack of a town, he must be preceded by drum and trumpet,
which shall as it were identify his cause with the accordant universe.
All woods and walls echo back his own spirit, and the hostile territory
is then preoccupied for him. He is no longer insulated, but infinitely
related and familiar. The roll-call musters for him all the forces of
nature.[91]

* * * * *

All sounds, and more than all, silence, do fife and drum for us.[92] The
least creaking doth whet all our senses and emit a tremulous light, like
the aurora borealis, over things. As polishing expresses the vein in
marble and the grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks
anywhere.[93]

* * * * *

To the sensitive soul, the universe has its own fixed measure, which is
its measure also, and, as a regular pulse is inseparable from a healthy
body, so is its healthiness dependent on the regularity of its rhythm.
In all sounds the soul recognizes its own rhythm, and seeks to express
its sympathy by a correspondent movement of the limbs. When the body
marches to the measure of the soul, then is true courage and invincible
strength.[94]

* * * * *

The coward would reduce this thrilling sphere music to a universal
wail, this melodious chant to a nasal cant. He thinks to conciliate all
hostile influences by compelling his neighborhood into a partial concord
with himself, but his music is no better than a jingle which is akin to
a jar,—jars regularly recurring.[95]

He blows a feeble blast of slender melody, because nature can have no
more sympathy with such a soul than it has of cheerful melody in itself.
Hence hears he no accordant note in the universe, and is a coward, or
consciously outcast and deserted man. But the brave man, without drum or
trumpet, compels concord everywhere by the universality and tunefulness
of his soul.[96]

"Take a metallic plate," says Coleridge, "and strew sand on it; sound
a harmonic chord over the sand, and the grains will whirl about in
circles, and other geometrical figures, all, as it were, depending on
some point relatively at rest. Sound a discord, and every grain will
whisk about without any order at all, in no figures, and with no points
of rest." The brave man is such a point of relative rest, over which
the soul sounds ever a harmonic chord.

* * * * *

Music is either a sedative or a tonic to the soul.[97] I read that
"Plato thinks the gods never gave men music, the science of melody
and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle the ear; but that the
discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous fabric of the soul,
and that of it that roves about the body, and many times, for want of
tune and air, breaks forth into many extravagances and excesses, might
be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to their former consent and
agreement."[98]

* * * * *

By dint of wind and stringed instruments the coward endeavors to put
the best face on the matter,—whistles to keep his courage up.

* * * * *

There are some brave traits related by Plutarch; e. g.: "Homer acquaints
us how Ajax, being to engage in a single combat with Hector, bade
the Grecians pray to the gods for him; and while they were at their
devotions, he was putting on his armor."

On another occasion, a storm arises, "which as soon as the pilot sees,
he falls to his prayers, and invokes his tutelar dæmons, but neglects
not in the meantime to hold to the rudder and let down the main yard."

"Homer directs his husbandman, before he either plow or sow, to pray
to the terrestrial Jove and the venerable Ceres, but with his hand upon
the plow-tail."

Ἀρχὴ γὰρ ὄντως τοῦ νικᾷν τὸ θαῤῥεῖν. (Verily, to be brave is the
beginning of victory.)

* * * * *

The Romans "made Fortune surname to Fortitude," for fortitude is that
alchemy that turns all things to good fortune. The man of fortitude,
whom the Latins called fortis, is no other than that lucky person
whom _fors_ favors, or _vir summae fortis_. If we will, every bark may
"carry Cæsar and Cæsar's fortune." The brave man stays at home. For an
impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself; he was an arrant coward who
first made shields of brass. For armor of proof, mea virtute me involvo
(I wrap myself in my virtue);

"Tumble me down, and I will sit
Upon my ruins, smiling yet."[99]

* * * * *

The bravest deed, which for the most part is left quite out of history,
which alone wants the staleness of a deed done and the uncertainty
of a deed doing, is the life of a great man. To perform exploits is
to be temporarily bold, as becomes a courage that ebbs and flows, the
soul quite vanquished by its own deed subsiding into indifference and
cowardice; but the exploit of a brave life consists in its momentary
completeness.[100]

FRIENDSHIP [101]

_Fall of_ 1839. Then first I conceive of a true friendship, when some
rare specimen of manhood presents itself. It seems the mission of such
to commend virtue to mankind, not by any imperfect preaching of her
word, but by their own carriage and conduct. We may then worship moral
beauty without the formality of a religion.

They are some fresher wind that blows, some new fragrance that breathes.
They make the landscape and the sky for us.

* * * * *

The rules of other intercourse are all inapplicable to this.

* * * * *

We are one virtue, one truth, one beauty. All nature is our satellite,
whose light is dull and reflected. She is subaltern to us,—an episode to
our poem; but we are primary, and radiate light and heat to the system.

* * * * *

I am only introduced once again to myself.

* * * * *

Conversation, contact, familiarity are the steps to it and instruments
of it, but it is most perfect when these are done, and distance and time
oppose no barrier.

* * * * *

I need not ask any man to be my friend, more than the sun the earth
to be attracted by him. It is not his to give, nor mine to receive. I
cannot pardon my enemy; let him pardon himself.

* * * * *

Commonly we degrade Love and Friendship by presenting them under the
aspect of a trivial dualism.

* * * * *

What matter a few words more or less with my friend,—with all
mankind;—they will still be my friends in spite of themselves. Let them
stand aloof if they can! As though the most formidable distance could
rob me of any real sympathy or advantage! No, when such interests are
at stake, time, and distance, and difference fall into their own places.

* * * * *

But alas! to be actually separated from that parcel of heaven we call
our friend, with the suspicion that we shall no more meet in nature, is
source enough for all the elegies that ever were written. But the true
remedy will be to recover our friend again piecemeal, wherever we can
find a feature, as Æetes gathered up the members of his son, which Medea
had strewn in her path.

* * * * *

The more complete our sympathy, the more our senses are struck dumb,
and we are repressed by a delicate respect, so that to indifferent eyes
we are least his friend, because no vulgar symbols pass between us. On
after thought, perhaps, we come to fear that we have been the losers by
such seeming indifference, but in truth that which withholds us is the
bond between us.

* * * * *

My friend will be as much better than myself as my aspiration is above
my performance.

* * * * *

This is most serene autumn weather. The chirp of crickets may be
heard at noon over all the land. As in summer they are heard only at
nightfall, so now by their incessant chirp they usher in the evening of
the year.[102] The lively decay of autumn promises as infinite duration
and freshness as the green leaves of spring.

1840

(ÆT. 22-23)

THE FISHER'S SON[103]

_Jan. 10._

I know the world where land and water meet,
By yonder hill abutting on the main;
One while I hear the waves incessant beat,
Then, turning round, survey the land again.

Within a humble cot that looks to sea,
Daily I breathe this curious warm life;
Beneath a friendly haven's sheltering lee
My noiseless day with myst'ry still is rife.

'Tis here, they say, my simple life began;
And easy credit to the tale I lend,
For well I know 'tis here I am a man.
But who will simply tell me of the end?

These eyes, fresh opened, spied the far-off Sea,
Which like a silent godfather did stand,
Nor uttered one explaining word to me,
But introduced straight Godmother Land.

And yonder still stretches that silent main,
With many glancing ships besprinkled o'er;
And earnest still I gaze and gaze again
Upon the selfsame waves and friendly shore,

Till like a watery humor on the eye
It still appears whichever way I turn,
Its silent waste and mute o'erarching sky
With close-shut eyes I clearly still discern.

And yet with lingering doubt I haste each morn
To see if ocean still my gaze will greet,
And with each day once more to life am born,
And tread once more the earth with infant feet.

* * * * *

My years are like a stroll upon the beach,
As near the ocean's edge as I can go;
My tardy steps its waves do oft o'erreach,
Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.

Infinite work my hands find there to do,
Gathering the relics which the waves upcast;
Each storm doth scour the deep for something new,
And every time the strangest is the last.

My sole employment 'tis, and scrupulous care,
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides,
Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides.

I have no fellow-laborer on the shore;
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea;
Sometimes I think the ocean they've sailed o'er
Is deeper known upon the strand to me.

The middle sea can show no crimson dulse,
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view,
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
Whose feeble beat is elsewhere felt by few.

My neighbors come sometimes with lumb'ring carts.
As it would seem my pleasant toil to share,
But straightway take their loads to distant marts,
For only weeds and ballast are their care.

* * * * *

'Tis by some strange coincidence, if I
Make common cause with ocean when he storms,
Who can so well support a separate sky,
And people it with multitude of forms.

Oft in the stillness of the night I hear
Some restless bird presage the coming din,
And distant murmurs faintly strike my ear
From some bold bluff projecting far within.

My stillest depths straightway do inly heave
More genially than rests the summer's calm;
The howling winds through my soul's cordage grieve,
Till every shelf and ledge gives the alarm.

Far from the shore the swelling billows rise,
And gathering strength come rolling to the land,
And, as each wave retires, and murmur dies,
I straight pursue upon the streaming sand,

Till the returning surge with gathered strength
Compels once more the backward way to take,
And, creeping up the beach a cable's length,
In many a thirsty hollow leaves a lake.

Oft as some ruling star my tide has swelled
The sea can scarcely brag more wrecks than I;
Ere other influence my waves has quelled,
The stanchest bark that floats is high and dry.

_Jan. 19._

By a strong liking we prevail
Against the stoutest fort;
At length the fiercest heart will quail,
And our alliance court.

FRIENDS

_Jan. 26._ They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow
together.

History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should
not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such?

* * * * *

Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of
a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and
violets grow.

This conjunction of souls, like waves which meet and break, subsides
also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect.

* * * * *

I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be
conceived, double for variety, single for harmony,—two, only that we
might admire at our oneness,—one, because indivisible. Such community to
be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into
our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold
with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle
with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be
wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.

POETRY

_Jan._ No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself.
The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient,
and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its
requisitions.[104] It is indeed all that we do not know.

The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth,
grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover
that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks,
but only how good potato blows are.

The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight
has rested on this ground.

It has a logic more severe than the logician's.

You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it
on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought. The
best book is only an advertisement of it, such as is sometimes sewed in
with its cover.[105]

* * * * *

Its eccentric and unexplored orbit embraces the system.

_Jan. 27._ What a tame life we are living! How little heroic it is!
Let us devise never so perfect a system of living, and straightway the
soul leaves it to shuffle along its own way alone. It is easy enough
to establish a durable and harmonious routine; immediately all parts of
nature consent to it.[106] The sun-dial still points to the noon mark,
and the sun rises and sets for it. The neighbors are never fatally
obstinate when such a scheme is to be instituted; but forthwith all
lend a hand, and ring the bell, and bring fuel and lights, and put
by work and don their best garments, with an earnest conformity which
matches the operations of nature. There is always a present and extant
life which all combine to uphold, though its insufficiency is manifest
enough.[107] Still the sing-song goes on.

_Jan. 29._ A friend in history looks like some premature soul. The
nearest approach to a community of love in these days is like the
distant breaking of waves on the seashore. An ocean there must be, for
it washes our beach.

This alone do all men sail for, trade for, plow for, preach for, fight
for.

ÆSCHYLUS

The Greeks, as the Southerns generally, expressed themselves with more
facility than we in distinct and lively images, and as to the grace and
completeness with which they treated the subjects suited to their genius
they must be allowed to retain their ancient supremacy. But a rugged
and uncouth array of thought, though never so modern, may rout them at
any moment. It remains for other than Greeks to write the literature of
the next century.

Æschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only
an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural
facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder
which mythology had not helped to explain.

Tydeus' shield had for device

"An artificial heaven blazing with stars;
A bright full moon in the midst of the shield,
Eldest of stars, eye of night, is prominent."

* * * * *

The Greeks were stern but simple children in their literature. We have
gained nothing by the few ages which we have the start of them. This
universal wondering at those old men is as if a matured grown person
should discover that the aspirations of his youth argued a diviner life
than the contented wisdom of his manhood.

* * * * *

He is competent to express any of the common manly feelings. If his
hero is to make a boast, it does not lack fullness, it is as boastful
as could be desired; he has a flexible mouth, and can fill it readily
with strong, round words, so that you will say the man's speech wants
nothing, he has left nothing unsaid, but he has actually wiped his lips
of it.

Whatever the common eye sees at all and expresses as best it may, he
sees uncommonly and describes with rare completeness. The multitude that
thronged the theatre could no doubt go along with him to the end. The
Greeks had no transcendent geniuses like Milton and Shakespeare, whose
merit only posterity could fully appreciate.

* * * * *

The social condition of genius is the same in all ages. Æschylus was
undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the
mystery of the universe.

_Feb. 10._ CRITICISM ON AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS[108]

_Feb. 11._ "Truth," says Lord Bacon, "may perhaps come to the price of
a pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price
of a diamond or carbuncle, which sheweth best in varied lights." Like
the pearl, truth shines with a steady but pale light which invites
to introspection; it is intrinsically bright, not accidentally as the
diamond. We seem to behold its rear always, as though it were not coming
toward us but retiring from us. Its light is not reflected this way, but
we see the sombre and wrong side of its rays. As the dust in his beams
makes known that the sun shines.

Falsehoods that glare and dazzle are sloped toward us, reflecting full
in our faces even the light of the sun. Wait till sunset, or go round
them, and the falsity will be apparent.

* * * * *

It is never enough that our life is an easy one. We must live on the
stretch; not be satisfied with a tame and undisturbed round of weeks
and days, but retire to our rest like soldiers on the eve of a battle,
looking forward with ardor to the strenuous sortie of the morrow.[109]
"Sit not down in the popular seats and common level of virtues, but
endeavor to make them heroical. Offer not only peace offerings but
holocausts unto God." To the brave soldier the rust and leisure of
peace are harder than the fatigues of war. As our bodies court physical
encounters, and languish in the mild and even climate of the tropics,
so our souls thrive best on unrest and discontent.[110]

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

_Feb. 12._ Opposition is often so strong a likeness as to remind us of
the difference.

* * * * *

Truth has properly no opponent, for nothing gets so far up on the other
side as to be opposite. She looks broadcast over the field and sees no
opponent.

The ring-leader of the mob will soonest be admitted into the councils
of state.

* * * * *

Knavery is more foolish than folly, for that, half knowing its own
foolishness, it still persists. The knave has reduced folly to a system,
is the prudent, common-sense fool. The witling has the simplicity and
directness of genius, is the inspired fool. His incomprehensible ravings
become the creed of the dishonest of a succeeding era.

_Feb. 13._ An act of integrity is to an act of duty what the French verb
_être_ is to _devoir_. Duty is _ce que devrait être_.

Duty belongs to the understanding, but genius is not dutiful, the
highest talent is dutiful. Goodness results from the wisest use of
talent.

The perfect man has both genius and talent. The one is his head, the
other his foot; by one he is, by the other he lives.

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God, the end of the
world.[111]

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite
acclimated to _its_ atmosphere, but how often succumbs and goes into a
decline!

_Feb. 14._ Beauty lives by rhymes. Double a deformity is a beauty. Draw
this blunt quill over the paper, and fold it once transversely to the
line, pressing it suddenly before the ink dries, and a delicately shaded
and regular figure is the result, which art cannot surpass.[112]

* * * * *

A very meagre natural history suffices to make me a child. Only their
names and genealogy make me love fishes. I would know even the number of
their fin-rays, and how many scales compose the lateral line. I fancy I
am amphibious and swim in all the brooks and pools in the neighborhood,
with the perch and bream, or doze under the pads of our river amid the
winding aisles and corridors formed by their stems, with the stately
pickerel. I am the wiser in respect to all knowledges, and the better
qualified for all fortunes, for knowing that there is a minnow in the
brook. Methinks I have need even of his sympathy, and to be his fellow
in a degree. I do like him sometimes when he balances himself for an
hour over the yellow floor of his basin.[113]

_Feb. 15._ The good seem to inhale a more generous atmosphere and be
bathed in a more precious light than other men. Accordingly Virgil
describes the _sedes beatas_ thus:—

"Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo: Solemque suum, sua sidera nôrunt."[114]

_Feb. 16._ Divination is prospective memory.

* * * * *

There is a kindred principle at the bottom of all affinities. The
magnet cultivates a steady friendship with the pole, all bodies with all
others. The friendliness of nature is that goddess Ceres who presides
over every sowing and harvest, and we bless the same in sun and rain.
The seed in the ground tarries for a season with its genial friends
there; all the earths and grasses and minerals are its hosts, who
entertain it hospitably, and plenteous crops and teeming wagons are the
result.

_Feb. 18._ All romance is grounded on friendship. What is this rural,
this pastoral, this poetical life but its invention? Does not the moon
shine for Endymion? Smooth pastures and mild airs are for some Corydon
and Phyllis. Paradise belongs to Adam and Eve. Plato's republic is
governed by Platonic love.

_Feb. 20._ The coward's hope is suspicion, the hero's doubt a sort of
hope. The gods neither hope nor doubt.

_Feb. 22._ The river is unusually high, owing to the melting of the
snow. Men go in boats over their gardens and potato-fields, and all the
children of the village are on tiptoe to see whose fence will be carried
away next. Great numbers of muskrats, which have been driven out of
their holes by the water, are killed by the sportsmen.

They are to us instead of the beaver. The wind from over the meadows is
laden with a strong scent of musk, and by its racy freshness advertises
us of an unexplored wildness. Those backwoods are not far off. I am
affected by the sight of their cabins of mud and grass, raised four
or five feet, along the river, as when I read of the Pyramids, or the
barrows of Asia.[115]

People step brisker in the street for this unusual movement of the
waters. You seem to hear the roar of a waterfall and the din of
factories where the river breaks over the road.

Who would have thought that a few feet might not have been spared
from the trunks of most trees? Such as grow in the meadows, and are
now surrounded by that depth of water, have a dwarfish appearance. No
matter whether they are longer or shorter, they are now equally out of
proportion.

THE FRESHET

_Feb. 24._

A stir is on the Worcester hills,
And Nobscot too the valley fills;
Where scarce you'd fill an acorn cup
In summer when the sun was up,
No more you'll find a cup at all,
But in its place a waterfall.

O that the moon were in conjunction
To the dry land's extremest unction,
Till every dike and pier were flooded,
And all the land with islands studded,
For once to teach all human kind,
Both those that plow and those that grind,
There is no fixture in the land,
But all unstable is as sand.

The river swelleth more and more,
Like some sweet influence stealing o'er
The passive town; and for a while
Each tussock makes a tiny isle,
Where, on some friendly Ararat,
Resteth the weary water-rat.

No ripple shows Musketaquid,
Her very current e'en is hid,
As deepest souls do calmest rest
When thoughts are swelling in the breast;
And she, that in the summer's drought
Doth make a rippling and a rout,
Sleeps from Nawshawtuct to the Cliff,
Unruffled by a single skiff;
So like a deep and placid mind
Whose currents underneath it wind,
For by a thousand distant hills
The louder roar a thousand rills,
And many a spring which now is dumb,
And many a stream with smothered hum,
Doth faster well and swifter glide,
Though buried deep beneath the tide.

Our village shows a rural Venice,
Its broad lagunes where yonder fen is,
Far lovelier than the Bay of Naples
Yon placid cove amid the maples,
And in my neighbor's field of corn
I recognize the Golden Horn.

Here Nature taught from year to year,
When only red men came to hear,
Methinks 'twas in this school of art
Venice and Naples learned their part,
But still their mistress, to my mind,
Her young disciples leaves behind.[116]

_Feb. 26._ The most important events make no stir on their first
taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged
about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air
to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all
things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no
explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to
be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered
about the neighborhood, but an assassination, which is at war with the
constitution of things, creates a tumult immediately.

Corn grows in the night.[117]

_Feb. 27._ Some geniuses seem to hover in the horizon, like heat
lightning, which is not accompanied with fertilizing rain to us, but we
are obliged to rest contented with the belief that it is purifying the
air somewhere. Others make known their presence by their effects, like
that vivid lightning which is accompanied by copious rain and thunder
and, though it clears our atmosphere, sometimes destroys our lives.
Others still impart a steady and harmless light at once to large tracts,
as the aurora borealis; and this phenomenon is hardest to be accounted
for, some thinking it to be a reflection of the polar splendor, others a
subtle fluid which pervades all things and tends always to the zenith.
All are agreed that these are equally electrical phenomena, as some
clever persons have shown by drawing a spark with their knuckles. Modern
philosophy thinks it has drawn down lightning from the clouds.

_Feb. 28._ On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates
through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that
we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in
our own, to the world.

_Feb. 29._ A friend advises by his whole behavior,[118] and never
condescends to particulars; another chides away a fault, he loves it
away. While he sees the other's error, he is silently conscious of it,
and only the more loves truth himself, and assists his friend in loving
it, till the fault is expelled and gently extinguished.

_March 2._ Love is the burden of all Nature's odes. The song of the
birds is an epithalamium, a hymeneal. The marriage of the flowers spots
the meadows and fringes the hedges with pearls and diamonds. In the deep
water, in the high air, in woods and pastures, and the bowels of the
earth, this is the employment and condition of all things.

_March 4._ I learned to-day that my ornithology had done me no service.
The birds I heard, which fortunately did not come within the scope
of my science, sung as freshly as if it had been the first morning of
creation, and had for background to their song an untrodden wilderness,
stretching through many a Carolina and Mexico of the soul.[119]

_March 6._ There is no delay in answering great questions; for them all
things have an answer ready. The Pythian priestess gave her answers
instantly, and ofttimes before the questions were fairly propounded.
Great topics do not wait for past or future to be determined, but the
state of the crops or Brighton market no bird concerns itself about.

_March 8._ The wind shifts from northeast and east to northwest and
south, and every icicle which has tinkled on the meadow grass so
long trickles down its stem and seeks its water level unerringly
with a million comrades. In the ponds the ice cracks with a busy and
inspiriting din and down the larger streams is whirled, grating hoarsely
and crashing its way along, which was so lately a firm field for the
woodman's team and the fox, sometimes with the tracks of the skaters
still fresh upon it, and the holes cut for pickerel. Town committees
inspect the bridges and causeways, as if by mere eye-force to intercede
with the ice and save the treasury.

In the brooks the slight grating sound of small cakes of ice, floating
with various speed, is full of content and promise, and where the water
gurgles under a natural bridge, you may hear these hasty rafts hold
conversation in an undertone. Every rill is a channel for the juices of
the meadow.[120] Last year's grasses and flower-stalks have been steeped
in rain and snow, and now the brooks flow with meadow tea,—thoroughwort,
mint, flagroot, and pennyroyal, all at one draught.

In the ponds the sun makes incroachments around the edges first, as ice
melts in a kettle on the fire, darting his rays through this crevice,
and preparing the deep water to act simultaneously on the under side.

Two years and twenty now have flown;
Their meanness time away has flung;
These limbs to man's estate have grown,
But cannot claim a manly tongue.

Amidst such boundless wealth without
I only still am poor within;
The birds have sung their summer out,
But still my spring does not begin.

In vain I see the morning rise,
In vain observe the western blaze,
Who idly look to other skies,
Expecting life by other ways.

The sparrow sings at earliest dawn,
Building her nest without delay;
All things are ripe to hear her song,
And now arrives the perfect day.

Shall I then wait the autumn wind,
Compelled to seek a milder ray,
And leave no empty nest behind,
No wood still echoing to my lay?[121]

_March 16._ The cabins of the settlers are the points whence radiate
these rays of green and yellow and russet over the landscape; out of
these go the axes and spades with which the landscape is painted. How
much is the Indian summer and the budding of spring related to the
cottage? Have not the flight of the crow and the gyrations of the hawk
a reference to that roof?

* * * * *

The ducks alight at this season on the windward side of the river, in
the smooth water, and swim about by twos and threes, pluming themselves
and diving to peck at the root of the lily and the cranberries which
the frost has not loosened. It is impossible to approach them within
gunshot when they are accompanied by the gull, which rises sooner and
makes them restless. They fly to windward first, in order to get under
weigh, and are more easily reached by the shot if approached on that
side. When preparing to fly, they swim about with their heads erect,
and then, gliding along a few feet with their bodies just touching the
surface, rise heavily with much splashing and fly low at first, if not
suddenly aroused, but otherwise rise directly to survey the danger.
The cunning sportsman is not in haste to desert his position, but waits
to ascertain if, having got themselves into flying trim, they will not
return over the ground in their course to a new resting-place.

_March 20._ In society all the inspiration of my lonely hours seems to
flow back on me, and then first have expression.

Love never degrades its votaries, but lifts them up to higher walks of
being. They _over-look_ one another. All other charities are swallowed
up in this; it is gift and reward both.

We will have no vulgar Cupid for a go-between, to make us the playthings
of each other, but rather cultivate an irreconcilable hatred instead of
this.

_March 21._ The world is a fit theatre to-day in which any part may be
acted. There is this moment proposed to me every kind of life that men
lead anywhere, or that imagination can paint. By another spring I may
be a mail-carrier in Peru, or a South African planter, or a Siberian
exile, or a Greenland whaler, or a settler on the Columbia River, or a
Canton merchant, or a soldier in Florida, or a mackerel-fisher off Cape
Sable, or a Robinson Crusoe in the Pacific, or a silent navigator of any
sea. So wide is the choice of parts, what a pity if the part of Hamlet
be left out!

I am freer than any planet; no complaint reaches round the world. I can
move away from public opinion, from government, from religion, from
education, from society. Shall I be reckoned a ratable poll in the
county of Middlesex, or be rated at one spear under the palm trees of
Guinea? Shall I raise corn and potatoes in Massachusetts, or figs and
olives in Asia Minor? sit out the day in my office in State Street, or
ride it out on the steppes of Tartary? For my Brobdingnag I may sail to
Patagonia; for my Lilliput, to Lapland. In Arabia and Persia, my day's
adventures may surpass the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. I may be
a logger on the head waters of the Penobscot, to be recorded in fable
hereafter as an amphibious river-god, by as sounding a name as Triton or
Proteus; carry furs from Nootka to China, and so be more renowned than
Jason and his golden fleece; or go on a South Sea exploring expedition,
to be hereafter recounted along with the periplus of Hanno. I may repeat
the adventures of Marco Polo or Mandeville.

These are but few of my chances, and how many more things may I do with
which there are none to be compared!

* * * * *

Thank Fortune, we are not rooted to the soil, and here is not all the
world. The buckeye does not grow in New England; the mockingbird is
rarely heard here. Why not keep pace with the day, and not allow of a
sunset nor fall behind the summer and the migration of birds? Shall we
not compete with the buffalo, who keeps pace with the seasons, cropping
the pastures of the Colorado till a greener and sweeter grass awaits
him by the Yellowstone? The wild goose is more a cosmopolite than we;
he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Susquehanna, and
plumes himself for the night in a Louisiana bayou. The pigeon carries
an acorn in his crop from the King of Holland's to Mason and Dixon's
line. Yet we think if rail fences are pulled down and stone walls set
up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates
decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you can't go to Tierra
del Fuego this summer.[122]

But what of all this? A man may gather his limbs snugly within the shell
of a mammoth squash, with his back to the northeastern boundary, and not
be unusually straitened after all. Our limbs, indeed, have room enough,
but it is our souls that rust in a corner. Let us migrate interiorly
without intermission, and pitch our tent each day nearer the western
horizon. The really fertile soils and luxuriant prairies lie on this
side the Alleghanies. There has been no Hanno of the affections. Their
domain is untravelled ground, to the Mogul's dominions.

_March 22._ While I bask in the sun on the shores of Walden Pond, by
this heat and this rustle I am absolved from all obligation to the past.
The council of nations may reconsider their votes; the grating of a
pebble annuls them.[123]

_March 27._ How many are now standing on the European coast whom another
spring will find located on the Red River, or Wisconsin! To-day we
live an antediluvian life on our quiet homesteads, and to-morrow are
transported to the turmoil and bustle of a crusading era.

Think how finite after all the known world is. Money coined at
Philadelphia is a legal tender over how much of it! You may carry
ship biscuit, beef, and pork quite round to the place you set out
from. England sends her felons to the other side for safe keeping and
convenience.

_March 30._ Pray, what things interest me at present? A long, soaking
rain, the drops trickling down the stubble, while I lay drenched on a
last year's bed of wild oats, by the side of some bare hill, ruminating.
These things are of moment. To watch this crystal globe just sent
from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this sombre
drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another.
The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of
the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country
o'er, the impression of inward comfort and sociableness, the drenched
stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline
seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself.
These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature's English comfort.
The birds draw closer and are more familiar under the thick foliage,
composing new strains on their roosts against the sunshine.

_April 4._ We look to windward for fair weather.

_April 8._ How shall I help myself? By withdrawing into the garret, and
associating with spiders and mice, determining to meet myself face to
face sooner or later. Completely silent and attentive I will be this
hour, and the next, and forever. The most positive life that history
notices has been a constant retiring out of life, a wiping one's hands
of it, seeing how mean it is, and having nothing to do with it.

_April 9._ I read in Cudworth how "Origen determines that the stars do
not make but signify; and that the heavens are a kind of divine volume,
in whose characters they that are skilled may read or spell out human
events." Nothing can be truer, and yet astrology is possible. Men seem
to be just on the point of discerning a truth when the imposition is
greatest.

_April 17._ Farewell, etiquette! My neighbor inhabits a hollow sycamore,
and I a beech tree. What then becomes of morning calls with cards, and
deference paid to door-knockers and front entries, and presiding at
one's own table?

_April 19._ The infinite bustle of Nature of a summer's noon, or her
infinite silence of a summer's night, gives utterance to no dogma. They
do not say to us even with a seer's assurance, that this or that law is
immutable and so ever and only can the universe exist. But they are the
indifferent occasion for all things and the annulment of all laws.

_April 20._ The universe will not wait to be explained. Whoever
seriously attempts a theory of it is already behind his age. His yea
has reserved no nay for the morrow.

The wisest solution is no better than dissolution. Already the seer
_whispers_ his _convictions_ to bare walls; no audience in the land can
attend to them.

* * * * *

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. To my neighbors
who have risen in mist and rain I tell of a clear sunrise and the
singing of birds as some traditionary mythus. I look back to those
fresh but now remote hours as to the old dawn of time, when a solid and
blooming health reigned and every deed was simple and heroic.

_April 22._ Thales was the first of the Greeks who taught that souls are
immortal, and it takes equal wisdom to discern this old fact to-day.
What the first philosopher taught, the last will have to repeat. The
_world_ makes no progress.

* * * * *

I cannot turn on my heel in a carpeted room. What a gap in the morning
is a breakfast! A supper supersedes the sunset.

* * * * *

Methinks I hear the _ranz des vaches_ and shall soon be tempted to
desert.

* * * * *

Will not one thick garment suffice for three thin ones? Then I shall be
less compound, and can lay my hand on myself in the dark.

_May 14._ A kind act or gift lays us under obligation not so much to the
giver as to Truth and Love. We must then be truer and kinder ourselves.
Just in proportion to our sense of the kindness, and pleasure at it, is
the debt paid. What is it to be _grateful_ but to be _gratified_,—to
be _pleased_? The nobly poor will dissolve all obligations by nobly
accepting a kindness.

* * * * *

If we are not sensible of kindness, then indeed we incur a debt. Not
to be pleased by generous deeds at any time, though done to another,
but to sit crabbedly silent in a corner, what is it but a voluntary
imprisonment for debt? It is to see the world through a grating. Not
to let the light of virtuous actions shine on us at all times, through
every crevice, is to live in a dungeon.

* * * * *

War is the sympathy of concussion. We would fain rub one against
another. Its rub may be friction merely, but it would rather be
titillation. We discover in the quietest scenes how faithfully war has
copied the moods of peace. Men do not peep into heaven but they see
embattled hosts there. Milton's heaven was a camp. When the sun bursts
through the morning fog I seem to hear the din of war louder than when
his chariot thundered on the plains of Troy. Every man is a warrior
when he aspires. He marches on his post. The soldier is the practical
idealist; he has no sympathy with matter, he revels in the annihilation
of it. So do we all at times. When a freshet destroys the works of
man, or a fire consumes them, or a Lisbon earthquake shakes them down,
our sympathy with persons is swallowed up in a wider sympathy with the
universe. A crash is apt to grate agreeably on our ears.

* * * * *

Let not the faithful sorrow that he has no ear for the more fickle
harmonies of creation, if he is awake to the slower measure of virtue
and truth. If his pulse does not beat in unison with the musician's
quips and turns, it accords with the pulse-beat of the ages.[124]

_June 11._ We had appointed Saturday, August 31st, 1839, for the
commencement of our White Mountain expedition. We awake to a warm,
drizzling rain which threatens delay to our plans, but at length the
leaves and grass are dried, and it comes out a mild afternoon, of such
a sober serenity and freshness that Nature herself seems maturing some
greater scheme of her own. All things wear the aspect of a fertile
idleness. It is the eventide of the soul. After this long dripping and
oozing from every pore Nature begins to respire again more healthily
than ever. So with a vigorous shove we launch our boat from the bank,
while the flags and bulrushes curtsy a God-speed, and drop silently down
the stream.[125] As if we had launched our bark in the sluggish current
of our thoughts, and were bound nowhither.

Gradually the village murmur subsides, as when one falls into a placid
dream and on its Lethe tide is floated from the past into the future,
or as silently as fresh thoughts awaken us to new morning or evening
light.[126]

Our boat[127] was built like a fisherman's dory, with thole-pins for
four oars. Below it was green with a border of blue, as if out of
courtesy [to] the green sea and the blue heavens. It was well calculated
for service, but of consequence difficult to be dragged over shoal
places or carried round falls.

A boat should have a sort of life and independence of its own. It is a
sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, a fish to swim
and a bird to fly, related by one half of its structure to some swift
and shapely fish and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful
bird. The fins of the fish will tell where to set the oars, and the tail
give some hint for the form and position of the rudder. And so may we
learn where there should be the greatest breadth of beam and depth in
the hold. The bird will show how to rig and trim the sails, and what
form to give to the prow, that it may balance the boat and divide the
air and water best.

The boat took to the water; from of old there had been a tacit league
struck between these two, and now it gladly availed itself of the old
law that the heavier shall float the lighter.

Two masts we had provided, one to serve for a tent-pole at night, and
likewise other slender poles, that we might exchange the tedium of
rowing for poling in shallow reaches. At night we lay on a buffalo-skin
under a tent of drilled cotton eight feet high and as many in
diameter, which effectually defended from dampness, so short a step
is it from tiled roofs to drilled cotton, from carpeted floors to a
buffalo-skin.[128]

There were a few berries left still on the hills, hanging with brave
content by the slenderest threads.[129]

As the night stole over, such a freshness stole across the meadow that
every blade of cut-grass seemed to teem with life.[130]

We stole noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driving a pickerel
from the covert of the pads, or a bream from her nest, and the small
green bittern would now and then sail away on sluggish wings from
some recess of the shore.[131] With its patient study by rocks and
sandy capes, has it wrested the whole of her secret from Nature yet?
It has looked out from its dull eye for so long, standing on one leg,
on moon and stars sparkling through silence and dark, and now what a
rich experience is its! What says it of stagnant pools, and reeds, and
damp night fogs? It would be worth while to look in the eye which has
been open and seeing at such hours and in such solitudes. When I behold
that dull yellowish green, I wonder if my own soul is not a bright,
invisible green. I would fain lay my eye side by side with its and learn
of it.[132]

_End of my Journal of 546 pages._[133]

_June 14._

Λόγος τοῦ ἔργου ἄνευ ὕλης.—_Aristotle's definition of art._[134]

Ὅ χρή σε νοεῖν νόου ἄνθει.—_Chaldaic Oracles._

Ἐγώ εἰμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸν, καὶ ὂν, καὶ ἐσόμενον, καὶ τὸν ἐμὸν πέπλον
οὐδείς πω θνητὸς ἀπεκάλυψεν.—_Inscription upon the temple at Sais._

Plotinus aimed at ἐπαφήν, and παρουσίαν ἐπιστήμης κρείττονα, and τὸ
ἑαυτὸν κέντρον τῷ οἷον πάντων κέντρῳ συνάπτειν.

Μέλλει τὸ Θεῖον δ' ἐστὶ τοιοῦτον φύσει.—EURIPIDES in _Orestes_.

"The right Reason is in part divine, in part human; the second can be
expressed, but no language can translate the first."—EMPEDOCLES.

"In glory and in joy,
Behind his plough, upon the mountain-side!"[135]

I seemed to see the woods wave on a hundred mountains, as I read these
lines, and the distant rustling of their leaves reached my ear.

_June 15._ I stood by the river to-day considering the forms of the elms
reflected in the water. For every oak and birch, too, growing on the
hilltop, as well as for elms and willows, there is a graceful 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.[136] Anxious Nature sometimes reflects 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 perspective 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.

* * * * *

Why always insist that men incline to the moral side of their being?
Our life is not all moral. Surely, its actual phenomena deserve to
be studied impartially. The science of Human Nature has never been
attempted, as the science of Nature has. The dry light has never shone
on it. Neither physics nor metaphysics have touched it.

* * * * *

We have not yet met with a sonnet, genial and affectionate, to prophane
swearing, breaking on the still night air, perhaps, like the hoarse
croak of some bird. Noxious weeds and stagnant waters have their lovers,
and the utterer of oaths must have honeyed lips, and be another Attic
bee after a fashion, for only prevalent and essential harmony and beauty
can employ the laws of sound and of light.

[Illustration: _Trees Reflected in the River_]

_June 16._ The river down which we glided for that long afternoon was
like a clear drop of dew with the heavens and the landscape reflected in
it. And as evening drew on, faint purple clouds began to be reflected in
its water, and the cow-bells tinkled louder and more incessantly on the
banks, and like shy water-rats we stole along near the shore, looking
out for a place to pitch our camp.[137]

It seems insensibly to grow lighter as night shuts in; the furthest
hamlet begins to be revealed, which before lurked in the shade of the
noon.[138] It twinkles now through the trees like some fair evening star
darting its ray across valley and wood.

* * * * *

Would it not be a luxury to stand up to one's chin in some retired swamp
for a whole summer's day, scenting the sweet-fern and bilberry blows,
and lulled by the minstrelsy of gnats and mosquitoes? A day passed in
the society of those Greek sages, such as described in the "Banquet" of
Xenophon, would not be comparable with the dry wit of decayed cranberry
vines, and the fresh Attic salt of the moss beds. Say twelve hours of
genial and familiar converse with the leopard frog. The sun to rise
behind alder and dogwood, and climb buoyantly to his meridian of three
hands' breadth, and finally sink to rest behind some bold western
hummock. To hear the evening chant of the mosquito from a thousand green
chapels, and the bittern begin to boom from his concealed fort like
a sunset gun! Surely, one may as profitably be soaked in the juices
of a marsh for one day, as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and
damp,—are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?[139]

So is not shade as good as sunshine, night as day? Why be eagles and
thrushes always, and owls and whip-poor-wills never?

* * * * *

I am pleased to see the landscape through the bottom of a tumbler, it is
clothed in such a mild, quiet light, and the barns and fences checker
and partition it with new regularity. These rough and uneven fields
stretch away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon. The clouds are
finely distinct and picturesque, the light-blue sky contrasting with
their feathery whiteness. They are fit drapery to hang over Persia.[140]
The smith's shop, resting in such a Grecian light, is worthy to stand
beside the Parthenon. The potato and grain fields are such gardens as
he imagines who has schemes of ornamental husbandry.

If I were to write of the dignity of the farmer's life, I would behold
his farms and crops through a tumbler. All the occupations of men are
ennobled so.

Our eyes, too, are convex lenses, but we do not learn with the eyes;
they introduce us, and we learn after by converse with things.

_June 17._ Our lives will not attain to be spherical by lying on one
or the other side forever; but only by resigning ourselves to the law
of gravity in us, will our axis become coincident with the celestial
axis, and [only] by revolving incessantly through all circles, shall we
acquire a perfect sphericity.[141]

* * * * *

Men are inclined to lay the chief stress on likeness and not on
difference. We seek to know how a thing is related to us, and not if it
is strange. We call those bodies warm whose temperature is many degrees
below our own, and never those cold which are warmer than we. There are
many degrees of warmth below blood heat, but none of cold above it.[142]

* * * * *

Even the motto "Business before friends" admits of a high
interpretation. No interval of time can avail to defer friendship. The
concerns of time must be attended to in time. I need not make haste to
explore the whole secret of a star; if it were vanished quite out of
the firmament, so that no telescope could longer discover it, I should
not despair of knowing it entirely one day.

We meet our friend with a certain awe, as if he had just lighted on the
earth, and yet as if we had some title to be acquainted with him by our
old familiarity with sun and moon.

_June 18._ I should be pleased to meet man in the woods. I wish he were
to be encountered like wild caribous and moose.

* * * * *

I am startled when I consider how little I am _actually_ concerned about
the things I write in my journal.

* * * * *

Think of the Universal History, and then tell me,—when did burdock and
plantain sprout first?[143]

A fair land, indeed, do books spread open to us, from the Genesis down;
but alas! men do not take them up kindly into their own being, and
breathe into them a fresh beauty, knowing that the grimmest of them
belongs to such warm sunshine and still moonlight as the present.

* * * * *

Of what consequence whether I stand on London bridge for the next
century, or look into the depths of this bubbling spring which I have
laid open with my hoe?

_June 19._ The other day I rowed in my boat a free, even lovely young
lady, and, as I plied the oars, she sat in the stern, and there was
nothing but she between me and the sky.[144] So might all our lives be
picturesque if they were free enough, but mean relations and prejudices
intervene to shut out the sky, and we never see a man as simple and
distinct as the man-weathercock on a steeple.

* * * * *

The faint bugle notes which I hear in the west seem to flash on the
horizon like heat lightning.[145] Cows low in the street more friendly
than ever, and the note of the whip-poor-will, borne over the fields,
is the voice with which the woods and moonlight woo me.

* * * * *

I shall not soon forget the sounds which lulled me when falling asleep
on the banks of the Merrimack. Far into night I hear some tyro beating
a drum incessantly with a view to some country muster, and am thrilled
by an infinite sweetness as of a music which the breeze drew from the
sinews of war. I think of the line,—

"When the drum beat at dead of night."

How I wish it would wake the whole world to march to its melody, but
still it drums on alone in the silence and the dark. Cease not, thou
drummer of the night, thou too shalt have thy reward. The stars and the
firmament hear thee, and their aisles shall echo thy beat till its call
is answered, and the forces are mustered. The universe is attentive as
a little child to thy sound, and trembles as if each stroke bounded
against an elastic vibrating firmament. I should be contented if the
night never ended, for in the darkness heroism will not be deferred,
and I see fields where no hero has couched his lance.[146]

_June 20._ Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of
beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds. A spring is a cynosure in
the fields. All Muscovy glitters in the minute particles of mica on its
bottom, and the ripples cast their shadows flickeringly on the white
sand, as the clouds which flit across the landscape.

* * * * *

Something like the woodland sounds will be heard to echo through the
leaves of a good book. Sometimes I hear the fresh emphatic note of the
oven-bird, and am tempted to turn many pages; sometimes the hurried
chuckling sound of the squirrel when he dives into the wall.

* * * * *

If we only see clearly enough how mean our lives are, they will be
splendid enough. Let us remember not to strive upwards too long, but
sometimes drop plumb down the other way, and wallow in meanness. From
the deepest pit we may see the stars, if not the sun. Let us have
presence of mind enough to sink when we can't swim. At any rate, a
carcass had better lie on the bottom than float an offense to all
nostrils. It will not be falling, for we shall ride wide of the earth's
gravity as a star, and always be drawn upward still,—_semper cadendo
nunquam cadit_,—and so, by yielding to universal gravity, at length
become fixed stars.

* * * * *

Praise begins when things are seen partially. We begin to praise when
we begin to see that a thing needs our assistance.

* * * * *

When the heavens are obscured to us, and nothing noble or heroic
appears, but we are oppressed by imperfection and shortcoming on all
hands, we are apt to suck our thumbs and decry our fates. As if nothing
were to be done in cloudy weather, or, if heaven were not accessible
by the upper road, men would not find out a lower. Sometimes I feel
so cheap that I am inspired, and could write a poem about it,—but
straightway I cannot, for I am no longer mean. Let me know that I am
ailing, and I am well. We should not always beat off the impression of
trivialness, but make haste to welcome and cherish it. Water the weed
till it blossoms; with cultivation it will bear fruit. There are two
ways to victory,—to strive bravely, or to yield. How much pain the last
will save we have not yet learned.

_June 21._ I shall not soon forget my first night in a tent,—how the
distant barking of dogs for so many still hours revealed to me the
riches of the night. Who would not be a dog and bay the moon?[147]

* * * * *

I never feel that I am inspired unless my body is also. It too spurns a
tame and commonplace life. They are fatally mistaken who think, while
they strive with their minds, that they may suffer their bodies to
stagnate in luxury or sloth. The body is the first proselyte the Soul
makes. Our life is but the Soul made known by its fruits, the body.
The whole duty of man may be expressed in one line,—Make to yourself a
perfect body.

_June 22._ What a man knows, that he does.

* * * * *

It is odd that people will wonder how Shakespeare could write as he
did without knowing Latin, or Greek, or geography, as if these were of
more consequence than to know how to whistle. They are not backward to
recognize Genius,—how it dispenses with those furtherances which others
require, leaps where they crawl,—and yet they never cease to marvel that
so it was,—that it was Genius, and helped itself.

* * * * *

Nothing can shock a truly brave man but dullness. One can tolerate many
things. What mean these sly, suspicious looks, as if you were an odd
fish, a piece of crockery-ware to be tenderly handled? Surely people
forget how many rebuffs every man has experienced in his day,—perhaps
has fallen into a horsepond, eaten freshwater clams, or worn one shirt
for a week without washing. Cannot a man be as calmly tolerant as a
potato field in the sun, whose equanimity is not disturbed by Scotch
thistles over the wall, but there it smiles and waxes till the harvest,
let thistles mount never so high? You cannot receive a shock, unless you
have an electric affinity for that which shocks you. Have no affinity
for what is shocking.[148]

Do not present a gleaming edge to ward off harm, for that will oftenest
attract the lightning, but rather be the all-pervading ether which
the lightning does not strike but purify. Then will the rudeness or
profanity of your companion be like a flash across the face of your sky,
lighting up and revealing its serene depths.[149] Earth cannot shock
the heavens; but its dull vapor and foul smoke make a bright cloud spot
in the ether, and anon the sun, like a cunning artificer, will cut and
paint it, and set it for a jewel in the breast of the sky.[150]

When we are shocked at vice we express a lingering sympathy with it.
Dry rot, rust, and mildew shock no man, for none is subject to them.

_June 23._ We Yankees are not so far from right, who answer one question
by asking another. Yes and No are lies. A true answer will not aim to
establish anything, but rather to set all well afloat. All answers are
in the future, and day answereth to day. Do we think we can anticipate
them?

In Latin, to respond is to pledge one's self before the gods to do
faithfully and honorably, as a man should, in any case. This is good.

* * * * *

Music soothes the din of philosophy and lightens incessantly over the
heads of sages.[151]

* * * * *

How can the language of the poet be more expressive than nature? He
is content that what he has already read in simple characters, or
indifferently in all, be translated into the same again.

* * * * *

He is the true artist whose life is his material; every stroke of
the chisel must enter his own flesh and bone and not grate dully on
marble.[152]

* * * * *

The Springs.—What is any man's discourse to me if I am not sensible of
something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of the crickets? In
it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am
not constantly greeted and cheered in their discourse, as it were by
the flux of sparkling streams.

* * * * *

I cannot see the bottom of the sky, because I cannot see to the bottom
of myself. It is the symbol of my own infinity. My eye penetrates as
far into the ether as that depth is inward from which my contemporary
thought springs.

Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but
by abandonment, and childlike mirthfulness. If you would know aught, be
gay before it.

_June 24._ When I read Cudworth I find I can tolerate all,—atomists,
pneumatologists, atheists, and theists,—Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus,
Democritus, and Pythagoras. It is the attitude of these men, more than
any communication, which charms me. It is so rare to find a man musing.
But between them and their commentators there is an endless dispute. But
if it come to that, that you compare notes, then you are all wrong. As
it is, each takes me up into the serene heavens, and paints earth and
sky. Any sincere thought is irresistible; it lifts us to the zenith,
whither the smallest bubble rises as surely as the largest.

Dr. Cudworth does not consider that the belief in a deity is as great a
heresy as exists. Epicurus held that the gods were "of human form, yet
were so thin and subtile, as that, comparatively with our terrestrial
bodies, they might be called incorporeal; they having not so much
_carnem_ as _quasi-carnem_, nor _sanguinem_ as _quasi-sanguinem_,
a certain kind of aerial or ethereal flesh and blood." This, which
Cudworth pronounces "romantical," is plainly as good doctrine as his
own. As if any sincere thought were not the best sort of truth!

* * * * *

There is no doubt but the highest morality in the books is rhymed
or measured,—is, in form as well as substance, poetry. Such is the
scripture of all nations. If I were to compile a volume to contain the
condensed wisdom of mankind, I should quote no rhythmless line.[153]

* * * * *

Not all the wit of a college can avail to make one harmonious line. It
never _happens_. It may get so as to jingle, but a jingle is akin to a
jar,—jars regularly recurring.[154]

So delicious is plain speech to my ears, as if I were to be more
delighted by the whistling of the shot than frightened by the flying of
the splinters, I am content, I fear, to be quite battered down and made
a ruin of. I outgeneral myself when I direct the enemy to my vulnerable
points.

The loftiest utterance of Love is, perhaps, sublimely satirical.
Sympathy with what is sound makes sport of what is unsound.

* * * * *

Cliffs. Evening.—Though the sun set a quarter of an hour ago, his rays
are still visible, darting half-way to the zenith. That glowing morrow
in the west flashes on me like a faint presentiment of morning when I
am falling asleep. A dull mist comes rolling from the west, as if it
were the dust which day has raised. A column of smoke is rising from
the woods yonder, to uphold heaven's roof till the light comes again.
The landscape, by its patient resting there, teaches me that all good
remains with him that waiteth, and that I shall sooner overtake the dawn
by remaining here, than by hurrying over the hills of the west.

Morning and evening are as like as brother and sister. The sparrow and
thrush sing and the frogs peep for both.

The woods breathe louder and louder behind me. With what hurry-skurry
night takes place! The wagon rattling over yonder bridge is the
messenger which day sends back to night; but the dispatches are sealed.
In its rattle the village seems to say, This one sound, and I have done.

Red, then, is Day's color; at least it is the color of his heel. He is
'stepping westward.' We only notice him when he comes and when he goes.

With noble perseverance the dog bays the stars yonder. I too, like
thee, walk alone in this strange, familiar night, my voice, like thine,
beating against its friendly concave; and barking I hear only my own
voice. 10 o'clock.

_June 25._ Let me see no other conflict but with prosperity. If my path
run on before me level and smooth, it is all a mirage; in reality it is
steep and arduous as a chamois pass. I will not let the years roll over
me like a Juggernaut car.

We will warm us at each other's fire. Friendship is not such a cold
refining process as a double sieve, but a glowing furnace in which all
impurities are consumed.

Men have learned to touch before they scrutinize,—to shake hands, and
not to stare.

_June 26._ The best poetry has never been written, for when it might
have been, the poet forgot it, and when it was too late remembered it;
or when it might have been, the poet remembered it, and when it was too
late forgot it.

The highest condition of art is artlessness.

Truth is always paradoxical.

He will get to the goal first who stands stillest.

There is one let better than any help, and that is,—_Let-alone_.

By sufferance you may escape suffering.

He who resists not at all will never surrender.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

Say, Not so, and you will outcircle the philosophers.

Stand outside the wall, and no harm can reach you. The danger is that
you be walled in with it.

_June 27._ I am living this 27th of June, 1840, a dull, cloudy day and
no sun shining. The clink of the smith's hammer sounds feebly over the
roofs, and the wind is sighing gently, as if dreaming of cheerfuller
days. The farmer is plowing in yonder field, craftsmen are busy in the
shops, the trader stands behind the counter, and all works go steadily
forward. But I will have nothing to do; I will tell fortune that I
play no game with her, and she may reach me in my Asia of serenity and
indolence if she can.

* * * * *

For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself.[155]

* * * * *

He was no artist, but an artisan, who first made shields of brass.[156]

* * * * *

Unless we meet religiously, we prophane one another. What was the
consecrated ground round the temple, we have used as no better than a
domestic court.

Our friend's is as holy a shrine as any God's, to be approached with
sacred love and awe. Veneration is the measure of Love. Our friend
answers ambiguously, and sometimes before the question is propounded,
like the oracle of Delphi. He forbears to ask explanation, but doubts
and surmises darkly with full faith, as we silently ponder our fates.

In no presence are we so susceptible to shame. Our hour is a sabbath,
our abode a temple, our gifts peace offerings, our conversation a
communion, our silence a prayer. In prophanity we are absent, in
holiness near, in sin estranged, in innocence reconciled.

_June 28._ The prophane never hear music; the holy ever hear it. It is
God's voice, the divine breath audible. Where it is heard, there is a
sabbath. It is omnipotent; all things obey it as they obey virtue. It
is the herald of virtue.[157] It passes by sorrow, for grief hangs its
harp on the willows.

_June 29._ Of all phenomena, my own race are the most mysterious and
undiscoverable. For how many years have I striven to meet one, even on
common manly ground, and have not succeeded!

_June 30._ I sailed from Fair Haven last evening as gently and steadily
as the clouds sail through the atmosphere. The wind came blowing
blithely from the southwest fields, and stepped into the folds of our
sail like a winged horse, pulling with a strong and steady impulse.
The sail bends gently to the breeze, as swells some generous impulse of
the heart, and anon flutters and flaps with a kind of human suspense.
I could watch the motions of a sail forever, they are so rich and
full of meaning. I watch the play of its pulse, as if it were my own
blood beating there. The varying temperature of distant atmospheres
is graduated on its scale. It is a free, buoyant creature, the bauble
of the heavens and the earth. A gay pastime the air plays with it. If
it swells and tugs, it is because the sun lays his windy finger on it.
The breeze it plays with has been outdoors so long. So thin is it, and
yet so full of life; so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and
impatient when least serviceable.[158] So am I blown on by God's breath,
so flutter and flap, and fill gently out with the breeze.

In this fresh evening each blade and leaf looks as if it had been dipped
in an icy liquid greenness. Let eyes that ache come here and look,—the
sight will be a sovereign eyewater,—or else wait and bathe them in the
dark.

We go forth into the fields, and there the wind blows freshly onward,
and still on, and we must make new efforts not to be left behind. What
does the dogged wind intend, that, like a willful cur, it will not let
me turn aside to rest or content? Must it always reprove and provoke
me, and never welcome me as an equal?

The truth shall prevail and falsehood discover itself, as long as the
wind blows on the hills.

* * * * *

A man's life should be a stately march to a sweet but unheard music, and
when to his fellows it shall seem irregular and inharmonious, he will
only be stepping to a livelier measure, or his nicer ear hurry him into
a thousand symphonies and concordant variations. There will be no halt
ever, but at most a marching on his post, or such a pause as is richer
than any sound, when the melody runs into such depth and wildness as to
be no longer heard, but implicitly consented to with the whole life and
being. He will take a false step never, even in the most arduous times,
for then the music will not fail to swell into greater sweetness and
volume, and itself rule the movement it inspired.[159]

* * * * *

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the
soul.

* * * * *

Value and effort are as much coincident as weight and a tendency to
fall. In a very wide but true sense, effort is the deed itself, and
it is only when these sensible stuffs intervene, that our attention
is distracted from the deed to the accident. It is never the deed men
praise, but some marble or canvas which are only a staging to the real
work.[160]

_July 1._ To be a man is to do a man's work; always our resource is
to endeavor. We may well say, Success to our endeavors. Effort is the
prerogative of virtue.[161]

The true laborer is recompensed by his labor, not by his employer.
Industry is its own wages. Let us not suffer our hands to lose one jot
of their handiness by looking behind to a mean recompense, knowing that
our true endeavor cannot be thwarted, nor we be cheated of our earnings
unless by not earning them.[162]

* * * * *

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem
not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this, which is
stereotyped in the poet's life, is what he has become through his work.
Some symbol of value may shape itself to the senses in wood, or marble,
or verse, but this is fluctuating as the laborer's hire, which may or
may not be withheld. His very material is not material but supernatural.
Perhaps the hugest and most effective deed may have no sensible result
at all on earth, but paint itself in the heavens in new stars and
constellations. Its very material lies out of nature. When, in rare
moments, we strive wholly with one consent, which we call a yearning,
we may not hope that our work will stand in any artist's gallery.[163]
Let not the artist expect that his true work will stand in any prince's
gallery.

_July 2._ I am not taken up, like Moses, upon a mountain to learn the
law, but lifted up in my seat here, in the warm sunshine and genial
light.

* * * * *

They who are ready to go are already invited.

* * * * *

Neither men nor things have any true mode of invitation but to be
inviting.

* * * * *

Can that be a task which all things abet, and to postpone which is to
strive against nature?[164]

_July 3._ When Alexander appears, the Hercynian and Dodonean woods seem
to wave a welcome to him.

* * * * *

Do not thoughts and men's lives enrich the earth and change the aspect
of things as much as a new growth of wood?

* * * * *

What are Godfrey and Gonsalvo unless we breathe a life into them, and
reënact their exploits as a prelude to our own? The past is only so
heroic as we see it; it is the canvas on which our conception of heroism
is painted, the dim prospectus of our future field. We are dreaming of
what we are to do.[165]

* * * * *

The last sunrise I witnessed seemed to outshine the splendor of all
preceding ones, and I was convinced that it behooved man to dawn as
freshly, and with equal promise and steadiness advance into the career
of life, with as lofty and serene a countenance to move onward through
his midday to a yet fairer and more promising setting. Has the day
grown old when it sets? and shall man wear out sooner than the sun? In
the crimson colors of the west I discern the budding hues of dawn. To
my western brother it is rising pure and bright as it did to me, but
the evening exhibits in the still rear of day the beauty which through
morning and noon escaped me.[166] When we are oppressed by the heat and
turmoil of the noon, let us remember that the sun which scorches us with
brazen beams is gilding the hills of morning and awaking the woodland
quires for other men.

We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves.

What we call the gross atmosphere of evening is the accumulated deed
of the day, which absorbs the rays of beauty, and shows more richly
than the naked promise of the dawn. By earnest toil in the heat of the
noon, let us get ready a rich western blaze against the evening of our
lives.[167]

* * * * *

Low-thoughted, plodding men have come and camped in my neighbor's field
to-night, with camp music and bustle. Their bugle instantly finds a
sounding board in the heavens, though mean lips blow it. The sky is
delighted with strains which the connoisseur rejects. It seems to say,
Now is this my own earth.[168]

* * * * *

In music are the centripetal and centrifugal forces. The universe needed
only to hear a divine harmony that every star might fall into its proper
place and assume a true sphericity.[169]

_July 4._ 4 o'clock, A. M. The Townsend Light Infantry encamped last
night in my neighbor's inclosure.

The night still breathes slumberously over field and wood, when a few
soldiers gather about one tent in the twilight, and their band plays an
old Scotch air, with bugle and drum and fife attempered to the season.
It seems like the morning hymn of creation. The first sounds of the
awakening camp, mingled with the chastened strains which so sweetly
salute the dawn, impress me as the morning prayer of an army.[170]

And now the morning gun fires. The soldier awakening to creation and
awakening it. I am sure none are cowards now. These strains are the
roving dreams which steal from tent to tent, and break forth into
distinct melody. They are the soldier's morning thought. Each man awakes
himself with lofty emotions, and would do some heroic deed. You need
preach no homily to him; he is the stuff they are made of.

* * * * *

The whole course of our lives should be analogous to one day of the
soldier's. His Genius seems to whisper in his ear what demeanor is
befitting, and in his bravery and his march he yields a blind and
partial obedience.

* * * * *

The fresher breeze which accompanies the dawn rustles the oaks and
birches, and the earth respires calmly with the creaking of crickets.
Some hazel leaf stirs gently, as if anxious not to awake the day too
abruptly, while the time is hastening to the distinct line between
darkness and light. And soldiers issue from their dewy tents, and as if
in answer to expectant nature, sing a sweet and far-echoing hymn.

* * * * *

We may well neglect many things, provided we overlook them.

* * * * *

When to-day I saw the "Great Ball" rolled majestically along, it seemed
a shame that man could not move like it. All dignity and grandeur has
something of the undulatoriness of the sphere. It is the secret of
majesty in the rolling gait of the elephant, and of all grace in action
and in art. The line of beauty is a curve. Each man seems striving to
imitate its gait, and keep pace with it, but it moves on regardless
and conquers the multitude with its majesty. What shame that our lives,
which should be the source of planetary motion and sanction the order of
the spheres, are full of abruptness and angularity, so as not to roll,
nor move majestically.[171]

_July 5._ Go where we will, we discover infinite change in particulars
only, not in generals.

* * * * *

You cannot rob a man of anything which he will miss.

_July 6._ All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some
wise man.[172]

* * * * *

I observe a truly wise practice on every hand, in education, in
religion, and the morals of society,—enough embodied wisdom to have set
up many an ancient philosopher.[173]

This society, if it were a person to be met face to face, would not
only be tolerated but courted, with its so impressive experience and
admirable acquaintance with things.

Consider society at any epoch, and who does not see that heresy has
already _prevailed_ in it?[174]

* * * * *

Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it
brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day
will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been
written.

Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand
and shells on the shore. So much increase of _terra firma_. This may be
a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a
beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.

_July 7._ I have experienced such simple joy in the trivial matters of
fishing and sporting, formerly, as might inspire the muse of Homer and
Shakespeare. And now, when I turn over the pages and ponder the plates
of the "Angler's Souvenir," I exclaim with the poet,—

"Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud?"[175]

When I hear a sudden burst from a horn, I am startled, as if one had
provoked such wildness as he could not rule nor tame. He dares to wake
the echoes which he cannot put to rest.[176]

_July 8._ Doubt and falsehood are yet good preachers. They affirm
roundly, while they deny partially.

* * * * *

I am pleased to learn that Thales was up and stirring by night not
unfrequently, as his astronomical discoveries prove.

* * * * *

It was a saying of Solon that "it is necessary to observe a medium in
all things."

The golden mean, in ethics as in physics, is the centre of the system,
and that about which all revolve; and though, to a distant and plodding
planet, it is the uttermost extreme, yet, when that planet's year is
complete, it will be found central.[177] They who are alarmed lest
virtue run into extreme good, have not yet wholly embraced her, but
described only a slight arc about her, and from so small a curvature
you can calculate no centre whatever; but their mean is no better than
meanness, nor their medium than mediocrity.

The brave man, while he observes strictly this golden mean, seems to run
through all extremes with impunity; like the sun, which now appears in
the zenith, now in the horizon, and again is faintly reflected from the
moon's disk, and has the credit of describing an entire great circle,
crossing the equinoctial and solstitial colures, without detriment to
his steadfastness or mediocrity.[178]

* * * * *

Every planet asserts its own to be the centre of the system.

* * * * *

Only _meanness_ is mediocre, _moderate_; but the true _medium_ is not
contained within any _bounds_, but is as wide as the ends it connects.

* * * * *

When Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the
Athenians and not to the Megarians, he caused the tombs to be opened,
and showed that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their
dead to the same side with the Athenians, but the Megarians to the
opposite side.[179]

So does each part bear witness to all, and the history of all the past
may be read in a single grain of its ashes.

_July 9._ In most men's religion the ligature which should be its muscle
and sinew is rather like that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held
in their hands, when they went abroad from the temple of Minerva, the
other end being attached to the statue of the goddess. But frequently,
as in their case, the thread breaks, being stretched, and they are left
without an asylum.[180]

* * * * *

The value of many traits in Grecian history depends not so much on their
importance as history, as [on] the readiness with which they accept a
wide interpretation, and illustrate the poetry and ethics of mankind.
When they announce no particular truth, they are yet central to all
truth. They are like those examples by which we improve, but of which
we never formally extract the moral. Even the isolated and unexplained
facts are like the ruins of the temples which in imagination we restore,
and ascribe to some Phidias, or other master.

* * * * *

The Greeks were boys in the sunshine, the Romans were men in the field,
the Persians women in the house, the Egyptians old men in the dark.

* * * * *

He who receives an injury is an accomplice of the wrong-doer.

_July 10._ To myself I am as pliant as osier, and my courses seem not so
easy to be calculated as Encke's comet; but I am powerless to bend the
character of another; he is like iron in my hands. I could tame a hyena
more easily than my friend. I contemplate him as a granite boulder. He
is material which no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell an
oak with a firebrand, and wear a hatchet out of the rock, but I cannot
hew the smallest chip out of my fellow. There is a character in every
one which no art can reach to beautify or deform.[181]

* * * * *

Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts.

* * * * *

We know men through their eyes. You might say that the eye was always
original and unlike another. It is the feature of the individual, and
not of the family,—in twins still different. All a man's privacy is in
his eye, and its expression he cannot alter more than he can alter his
character. So long as we look a man in the eye, it seems to rule the
other features, and make them, too, original. When I have mistaken one
person for another, observing only his form, and carriage, and inferior
features, the unlikeness seemed of the least consequence; but when I
caught his eye, and my doubts were removed, it seemed to pervade every
feature.

The eye revolves on an independent pivot which we can no more control
than our own will. Its axle is the axle of the soul, as the axis of the
earth is coincident with the axis of the heavens.

_July 11._ The true art is not merely a sublime consolation and holiday
labor which the gods have given to sickly mortals, to be wrought at in
parlors, and not in stithies amid soot and smoke, but such a masterpiece
as you may imagine a dweller on the table-lands of Central Asia might
produce, with threescore and ten years for canvas, and the faculties of
a man for tools,—a human life, wherein you might hope to discover more
than the freshness of Guido's Aurora, or the mild light of Titian's
landscapes; not a bald imitation or rival of Nature, but the restored
original of which she is the reflection. For such a work as this,
whole galleries of Greece and Italy are a mere mixing of colors and
preparatory quarrying of marble.[182]

Not how is the idea expressed in stone or on canvas, is the question,
but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the
artist.

There is much covert truth in the old mythology which makes Vulcan
a brawny and deformed smith, who sweat more than the other gods. His
stithy was not like a modern studio.

* * * * *

Let us not wait any longer, but step down from the mountains on to the
plain of earth. Let our delay be like the sun's, when he lingers on the
dividing line of day and night a brief space when the world is grateful
for his light. We will make such haste as the morning and such delay as
the evening.[183]

* * * * *

It concerns us rather to be something here present than to leave
something behind us.[184]

* * * * *

It is the man determines what is said, not the words. If a mean person
uses a wise maxim, I bethink me how it can be interpreted so as to
commend itself to his meanness; but if a wise man makes a commonplace
remark, I consider what wider construction it will admit. When Pittacus
says, "It is necessary to accommodate one's self to the time and take
advantage of the occasion," I assent. He might have considered that
to accommodate one's self to all times, and take advantage of all
occasions, was really to be independent, and make our own opportunity.

_July 12._ What first suggested that necessity was grim, and made fate
so fatal? The strongest is always the least violent. Necessity is a
sort of Eastern cushion on which I recline. I contemplate its mild,
inflexible countenance, as the haze in October days. When I am vexed I
only ask to be left alone with it. Leave me to my fate. It is the bosom
of time and the lap of eternity; since to be necessary is to be needful,
it is only another name for inflexibility of good. How I welcome my grim
fellow and aspire to be such a necessity as he! He is so flexible, and
yields to me as the air to my body! I leap and dance in his midst, and
play with his beard till he smiles. I greet thee, my elder brother, who
with thy touch ennoblest all things. Must it be so, then is it good.
Thou commendest even petty ills by thy countenance.

Over Greece hangs the divine necessity, ever a mellower heaven of
itself, whose light too gilds the Acropolis and a thousand fanes and
groves.[185]

* * * * *

Pittacus said there was no better course than to endeavor to do well
what you are doing at any moment.

* * * * *

Go where he will, the wise man is proprietor of all things. Everything
bears a similar inscription, if we could but read it, to that on the
vase found in the stomach of a fish in old times,—"To the most wise."

* * * * *

When his impious fellow-passengers invoked the gods in a storm, Bias
cried, "Hist! hist! lest the gods perceive that you are here, for we
should all be lost."

* * * * *

A wise man will always have his duds picked up, and be ready for
whatever may happen, as the prudent merchant, notwithstanding the lavish
display of his wares, will yet have them packed or easy to be removed in
emergencies. In this sense there is something sluttish in all finery.
When I see a fine lady or gentleman dressed to the top of the fashion,
I wonder what they would do if an earthquake should happen, or a fire
suddenly break out, for they seem to have counted only on fair weather,
and that things will go on smoothly and without jostling. Those curls
and jewels, so nicely adjusted, expect an unusual deference from the
elements.

Our dress should be such as will hang conveniently about us, and fit
equally well in good and in bad fortune; such as will approve itself
of the right fashion and fabric, whether for the cotillion or the
earthquake. In the sack of Priene, when the inhabitants with much hurry
and bustle were carrying their effects to a place of safety, some one
asked Bias, who remained tranquil amid the confusion, why he was not
thinking how he should save something, as the others were. "I do so,"
said Bias, "for I carry all my effects with me."

_July 14._ Our discourse should be _ex tempore_, but not _pro tempore_.

_July 16._ We are as much refreshed by sounds as by sights, or scents,
or flavors,—as the barking of a dog heard in the woods at midnight, or
the tinklings which attend the dawn.

As I picked blackberries this morning, by starlight, the distant yelping
of a dog fell on my inward ear, as the cool breeze on my cheek.

_July 19._ These two days that I have not written in my Journal, set
down in the calendar as the 17th and 18th of July, have been really an
æon in which a Syrian empire might rise and fall. How many Persias have
been lost and won in the interim? Night is spangled with fresh stars.

_July 26._ When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out
gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I
could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring night.

_July 27._ Some men, like some buildings, are bulky but not great. The
Pyramids any traveller may measure with his line, but the dimensions
of the Parthenon in feet and inches will seem to dangle from its
entablature like an elastic drapery.[186]

* * * * *

Much credit is due to a brave man's eye. It is the focus in which all
rays are collected. It sees from within, or from the centre, just as we
scan the whole concave of the heavens at a glance, but can compass only
one side of the pebble at our feet.[187]

* * * * *

The grandeur of these stupendous masses of clouds, tossed into such
irregular greatness across the sky, seems thrown away on the meanness
of my employment. The drapery seems altogether too rich for such poor
acting.[188]

In vain the sun challenges man to equal greatness in his career. We
look in vain over earth for a Roman greatness to answer the eternal
provocation.[189]

We look up to the gilded battlements of the eternal city, and are
contented to be suburban dwellers outside the walls.[190]

* * * * *

By the last breath of the May air I inhale I am reminded that the ages
never got so far down as this before. The wood thrush is a more modern
philosopher than Plato and Aristotle. They are now a dogma, but he
preaches the doctrine of this hour.

* * * * *

This systole-diastole of the heart, the circulation of the blood from
the centre to the extremities, the chylification which is constantly
going on in our bodies are a sort of military evolution, a struggle to
outgeneral the decay of time by the skillfulest tactics.

* * * * *

When bravery is worsted, it joins the peace society.

* * * * *

A word is wiser than any man, than any series of words. In its present
received sense it may be false, but in its inner sense by descent and
analogy it approves itself. Language is the most perfect work of art in
the world. The chisel of a thousand years retouches it.

* * * * *

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have
provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it. She has
bevelled the margins of the eyelids that the tears may not overflow on
the cheek.[191]

* * * * *

We can conceive of a Bravery so wide that nothing can meet to befall it,
so omnipresent that nothing can lie in wait for it, so permanent that
no obstinacy can reduce it. The stars are its silent sentries by night,
and the sun its pioneer by day. From its abundant cheerfulness spring
flowers and the rainbow, and its infinite humor and wantonness produce
corn and vines.[192]

1841

(ÆT. 23-24)

_Jan. 23._ A day is lapsing. I hear cockerels crowing in the yard,
and see them stalking among the chips in the sun. I hear busy feet on
the floors, and the whole house jars with industry. Surely the day is
well spent, and the time is full to overflowing. Mankind is as busy
as the flowers in summer, which make haste to unfold themselves in the
forenoon, and close their petals in the afternoon.

The momentous topics of human life are always of secondary importance
to the business in hand, just as carpenters discuss politics between
the strokes of the hammer while they are shingling a roof.[193]

The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the
spheres.

The solidity and apparent necessity of this routine insensibly recommend
it to me. It is like a cane or a cushion for the infirm, and in view of
it all are infirm. If there were but one erect and solid-standing tree
in the woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and make sure of
their footing. Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to;
we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.[194]
It is the fence over which neighbors lean when they talk. All this
cockcrowing, and hawing and geeing, and business in the streets, is like
the spring-board on which tumblers perform and develop their elasticity.
Our health requires that we should recline on it from time to time. When
we are in it, the hand stands still on the face of the clock, and we
grow like corn in the genial dankness and silence of the night.[195] Our
weakness wants it, but our strength uses it. Good for the body is the
work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for
either the work of the other. Let them not call hard names, nor know a
divided interest.

* * * * *

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I am
reminded, by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to
be contemplated, of the inexpressible privacy of a life,—how silent
and unambitious it is. The beauty there is in mosses will have to be
considered from the holiest, quietest nook.[196]

The gods delight in stillness; they say, 'St—'st. My truest, serenest
moments are too still for emotion; they have woollen feet. In all our
lives we live under the hill, and if we are not gone we live there
still.

_Jan. 24. Sunday._ I almost shrink from the arduousness of meeting men
erectly day by day.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to
be. Be sure you give men the best of your wares, though they be poor
enough, and the gods will help you to lay up a better store for the
future. Man's noblest gift to man is his sincerity, for it embraces his
integrity also. Let him not dole out of himself anxiously, to suit their
weaker or stronger stomachs, but make a clean gift of himself, and empty
his coffers at once. I would be in society as in the landscape; in the
presence of nature there is no reserve, nor effrontery.

* * * * *

Coleridge says of the "_ideas_ spoken out everywhere in the Old and New
Testament," that they "resemble the fixed stars, which appear of the
same size to the naked as to the armed eye; the magnitude of which the
telescope may rather seem to diminish than to increase."

* * * * *

It is more proper for a spiritual fact to have suggested an analogous
natural one, than for the natural fact to have preceded the spiritual
in our minds.

* * * * *

By spells seriousness will be forced to cut capers, and drink a deep and
refreshing draught of silliness; to turn this sedate day of Lucifer's
and Apollo's, into an all fools' day for Harlequin and Cornwallis. The
sun does not grudge his rays to either, but they are alike patronized
by the gods. Like overtasked schoolboys, all my members and nerves
and sinews petition Thought for a recess, and my very thigh-bones
itch to slip away from under me, and run and join the mêlée. I exult
in stark inanity, leering on nature and the soul. We think the gods
reveal themselves only to sedate and musing gentlemen. But not so; the
buffoon in the midst of his antics catches unobserved glimpses, which
he treasures for the lonely hour. When I have been playing tomfool, I
have been driven to exchange the old for a more liberal and catholic
philosophy.

_Jan. 25. Monday._ To-day I feel the migratory instinct strong in me,
and all my members and humors anticipate the breaking up of winter. If
I yielded to this impulse, it would surely guide me to summer haunts.
This indefinite restlessness and fluttering on the perch do, no doubt,
prophesy the final migration of souls out of nature to a serene summer,
in long harrows and waving lines[197] in the spring weather, over what
fair uplands and fertile Elysian meadows winging their way at evening
and seeking a resting-place with loud cackling and uproar!

* * * * *

Wealth, no less than knowledge, is power. Among the Bedouins the richest
man is the sheik, among savages he who has most iron and wampum is
chief, and in England and America he is the merchant prince.

* * * * *

We should strengthen, and beautify, and industriously mould our bodies
to be fit companions of the soul,—assist them to grow up like trees, and
be agreeable and wholesome objects in nature. I think if I had had the
disposal of this soul of man, I should have bestowed it sooner on some
antelope of the plains than upon this sickly and sluggish body.

_Jan. 26. Tuesday._ I have as much property as I can command and use.
If by a fault in my character I do not derive my just revenues, there is
virtually a mortgage on my inheritance. A man's wealth is never entered
in the registrar's office. Wealth does not come in along the great
thoroughfares, it does not float on the Erie or Pennsylvania canal, but
is imported by a solitary track without bustle or competition, from a
brave industry to a quiet mind.

* * * * *

I had a dream last night which had reference to an act in my life in
which I had been most disinterested and true to my highest instinct but
completely failed in realizing my hopes; and now, after so many months,
in the stillness of sleep, complete justice was rendered me. It was a
divine remuneration. In my waking hours I could not have conceived of
such retribution; the presumption of desert would have damned the whole.
But now I was permitted to be not so much a subject as a partner to that
retribution. It was the award of divine justice, which will at length
be and is even now accomplished.[198]

* * * * *

Good writing as well as good acting will be obedience to conscience.
There must not be a particle of will or whim mixed with it. If we can
listen, we shall hear. By reverently listening to the inner voice, we
may reinstate ourselves on the pinnacle of humanity.

_Jan. 27. Wednesday._ In the compensation of the dream, there was no
implied loss to any, but immeasurable advantage to all.[199]

* * * * *

The punishment of sin is not positive, as is the reward of virtue.

* * * * *

For a flower, I like the name pansy, or _pensée_, best of any.

_Jan. 28._ No innocence can quite stand up under suspicion, if it is
conscious of being suspected. In the company of one who puts a wrong
construction upon your actions, they are apt really to deserve a
mean construction. While in that society I can never retrieve myself.
Attribute to me a great motive, and I shall not fail to have one; but a
mean one, and the fountain of virtue will be poisoned by the suspicion.
Show men unlimited faith as the coin with which you will deal with them,
and they will invariably exhibit the best wares they have. I would meet
men as the friends of all their virtue, and the foes of all their vice,
for no man is the partner of his guilt. If you suspect me you will never
see me, but all our intercourse will be the politest leave-taking;
I shall constantly defer and apologize, and postpone myself in your
presence. The self-defender is accursed in the sight of gods and men; he
is a superfluous knight, who serves no lady in the land. He will find
in the end that he has been fighting windmills, and battered his mace
to no purpose. The injured man with querulous tone resisting his fate
is like a tree struck by lightning, which rustles its sere leaves the
winter through, not having vigor enough [to] cast them off.

As for apologies, I must be off with the dew and the frost, and leave
mankind to repair the damage with their gauze screens and straw.

* * * * *

Resistance is a very wholesome and delicious morsel at times. When Venus
advanced against the Greeks with resistless valor, it was by far the
most natural attitude into which the poet could throw his hero to make
him resist heroically. To a devil one might yield gracefully, but a god
would be a worthy foe, and would pardon the affront.

* * * * *

It would be worth while, once for all, fairly and cleanly to tell how
we are to be used, as vendors of lucifer matches send directions in the
envelope, both how light may be readily procured and no accident happen
to the user.

* * * * *

Let your mood determine the form of salutation, and approach the
creature with a natural nonchalance, as though he were anything but what
he is, and you were anything but what you are,—as though he were he,
and you were you; in short, as though he were so insignificant that it
did not signify, and so important that it did not import. Depend upon
it, the timber is well seasoned and tough, and will bear rough usage;
and if it should crack, there is plenty more where it came from. I am no
piece of china-ware that cannot be jostled against my neighbor, without
danger of rupture from the collision, and must needs ring a scrannel
strain to the end of my days when once I am cracked; but rather one of
the old-fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while stands at the head
of the table, and at another is a milking-stool, and at another a seat
for children, and finally goes down to its grave not unadorned with
honorable scars, and does not die till it is _worn_ out. Use me, for I
am useful in my way. I stand as one of many petitioners, from toadstool
and henbane up to dahlia and violet, supplicating to be put to my use,
if by any means ye may find me serviceable; whether for a medicated
drink or bath, as balm and lavender; or for fragrance, as verbena and
geranium; or for sight, as cactus; or for thoughts, as pansy.[200]

_Jan. 29._ There is something proudly thrilling in the thought that this
obedience to conscience and trust in God, which is so solemnly preached
in extremities and arduous circumstances, is only to retreat to one's
self, and rely on our own strength. In trivial circumstances I find
myself sufficient to myself, and in the most momentous I have no ally
but myself, and must silently put by their harm by my own strength, as I
did the former. As my own hand bent aside the willow in my path, so must
my single arm put to flight the devil and his angels. God is not our
ally when we shrink, and neuter when we are bold. If by trusting in God
you lose any particle of your vigor, trust in Him no longer. When you
trust, do not lay aside your armor, but put it on and buckle it tighter.
If by reliance on the gods I have disbanded one of my forces, then was
it poor policy. I had better have retained the most inexperienced tyro
who had straggled into the camp, and let go the heavenly alliance. I
cannot afford to relax discipline because God is on my side, for He
is on the side of discipline. And if the gods were only the heavens I
fought under, I would not care if they stormed or were calm. I do not
want a countenance, but a help. And there is more of God and divine help
in a man's little finger than in idle prayer and trust.

* * * * *

The best and bravest deed is that which the whole man—heart, lungs,
hands, fingers, and toes—at any time prompts. Each hanger-on in the
purlieus of the camp, must strike his standard at the signal from the
Prætorian tent, and fall into the line of march; but if a single sutler
delay to make up his pack, then suspect the fates and consult the omens
again. This is the meaning of integrity; this is to be an integer, and
not a fraction. Be even for all virtuous ends, but odd for all vice. Be
a perfect power, so that any of your roots multiplied into itself may
give the whole again.

* * * * *

Beauty is compared, not measured, for it is the creature of proportions,
not of size. Size must be subdued to it. It is hard for a tall or a
short person to be beautiful.

To graft the Persian lilac on the ash, is as if you were to splice the
thigh-bones of the Venus de Medici.

* * * * *

Friends will have to be introduced each time they meet. They will
be eternally strange to one another, and when they have mutually
appropriated their value for the last hour, they will go and gather
a new measure of strangeness for the next. They are like two boughs
crossed in the wood, which play backwards and forwards upon one another
in the wind, and only wear into each other, but never the sap of the
one flows into the pores of the other, for then the wind would no more
draw from them those strains which enchanted the wood. They are not two
united, but rather one divided.

* * * * *

Of all strange and unaccountable things this journalizing is the
strangest. It will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not
good, nor its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost
and richest wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest
homemade stuffs; but after months or years I may discover the wealth
of India, and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in
that confused heap, and what perhaps seemed a festoon of dried apple
or pumpkin will prove a string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from
Coromandel.

* * * * *

Men lie behind the barrier of a relation as effectually concealed as the
landscape by a mist; and when at length some unforeseen accident throws
me into a new attitude to them, I am astounded, as if for the first time
I saw the sun on the hillside. They lie out before me like a new order
of things. As, when the master meets his pupil as a man, then first do
we stand under the same heavens, and master and pupil alike go down the
resistless ocean stream together.

_Jan. 30. Saturday._ Far over the fields, between the tops of yonder
wood, I see a slight cloud not larger than the vapor from a kettle,
drifting by its own inward purpose in a direction contrary to the
planet. As it flits across the dells and defiles of the tree-tops, now
seen, then lost beyond a pine, I am curious to know wherein its will
resides, for to my eye it has no heart, nor lungs, nor brain, nor any
interior and private chamber which it may inhabit.

Its motion reminds me of those lines of Milton:—

"As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood,
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole."

The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of
a pineapple, which if you divide in the middle will expose three red
kernels like the tamarind-stone. So does winter with his mock harvest
jeer at the sincerity of summer. The tropical fruits, which will not
bear the rawness of our summer, are imitated in a thousand fantastic
shapes by the whimsical genius of winter.

* * * * *

In winter the warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated
from the earth. In summer I forget to bless the sun for his heat; but
when I feel his beams on my back as I thread some snowy dale, I am
grateful as for a special kindness which would not be weary of well
doing but had pursued me even into that by-place.

* * * * *

When the wind blows, the fine snow comes filtering down through all the
aisles of the wood in a golden cloud.

* * * * *

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.

* * * * *

The fashions of the wood are more fluctuating than those of Paris; snow,
rime, ice, green and dry leaves incessantly make new patterns. There are
all the shapes and hues of the kaleidoscope and the designs and ciphers
of books of heraldry in the outlines of the trees. Every time I see a
nodding pine-top, it seems as if a new fashion of wearing plumes had
come into vogue.

* * * * *

I saw a team come out of a path in the woods, as though it had never
gone in, but belonged there, and only came out like Elisha's bears. It
was wholly of the village, and not at all of the wood.

* * * * *

These particles of snow which the early wind shakes down are what is
stirring, or the morning news of the wood. Sometimes it is blown up
above the trees, like the sand of the desert.

* * * * *

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.

* * * * *

I tread in the tracks of the fox which 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 these woods,
and expected soon to catch it in its lair.[201]

* * * * *

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, predetermined 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.

* * * * *

Here is the distinct trail of a fox stretching [a] quarter of a mile
across the pond. Now I am curious to know what has determined its
graceful curvatures, its greater or less spaces and distinctness, and
how surely they were coincident with the fluctuations of some mind,
why they now lead me two steps to the right, and then three to the
left. If these things are not to be called up and accounted for in the
Lamb's Book of Life, I shall set them down for careless accountants.
Here was one expression of the divine mind this morning. The pond was
his journal, and last night's snow made a _tabula rasa_ for him. I know
which way a mind wended this morning, what horizon it faced, by the
setting of these tracks; whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by the
greater or less intervals and distinctness, for the swiftest step leaves
yet a lasting trace.[202]

* * * * *

Sometimes I come out suddenly upon a high plain, which seems to be the
upper level and true surface of the earth, and by its very baldness
aspires and lies up nearer to the stars,—a place where a decalogue might
be let down or a saint translated.

* * * * *

I take a horse and oxen, standing among the wood-piles in the forest,
for one of them, and when at length the horse pricks his ears, and I
give him another name, where's the difference? I am startled by the
possibility of such errors, and the indifference with [which] they are
allowed to occur.

* * * * *

Fair Haven Pond is _scored_ with the trails of foxes, and you may see
where they have gambolled and gone through a hundred evolutions, which
testify to a singular listlessness and leisure in nature.

Suddenly, looking down the river, I saw a fox some sixty rods off,
making across to the hills on my left. As the snow lay five inches deep,
he made but slow progress, but it was no impediment to me. So, yielding
to the instinct of the chase, I tossed my head aloft and bounded away,
snuffing the air like a fox-hound, and spurning the world and the Humane
Society at each bound. It seemed the woods rang with the hunter's
horn, and Diana and all the satyrs joined in the chase and cheered
me on. Olympian and Elean youths were waving palms on the hills. In
the meanwhile I gained rapidly on the fox; but he showed a remarkable
presence of mind, for, instead of keeping up the face of the hill, which
was steep and unwooded in that part, he kept along the slope in the
direction of the forest, though he lost ground by it. Notwithstanding
his fright, he took no step which was not beautiful. The course on his
part was a series of most graceful curves. It was a sort of leopard
canter, I should say, as if he were nowise impeded by the snow, but
were husbanding his strength all the while. When he doubled I wheeled
and cut him off, bounding with fresh vigor, and Antæus-like, recovering
my strength each time I touched the snow. Having got near enough for a
fair view, just as he was slipping into the wood, I gracefully yielded
him the palm. He ran as though there were not a bone in his back,
occasionally dropping his muzzle to the snow for a rod or two, and then
tossing his head aloft when satisfied of his course. When he came to a
declivity he put his fore feet together and slid down it like a cat. He
trod so softly that you could not have heard it from any nearness, and
yet with such expression that it would not have been quite inaudible at
any distance. So, hoping this experience would prove a useful lesson to
him, I returned to the village by the highway of the river.[203]

* * * * *

There is all the romance of my youthfulest moment in music. Heaven lies
about us, as in our infancy. There is nothing so wild and extravagant
that it does not make true. It makes a dream my only real experience,
and prompts faith to such elasticity that only the incredible can
satisfy it. It tells me again to trust the remotest and finest, as the
divinest, instinct. All that I have imagined of heroism, it reminds
and reassures me of. It is a life unlived, a life beyond life, where at
length my years will pass. I look under the lids of Time.

_Jan. 31. Sunday._ At each step man measures himself against the system.
If he cannot actually belay the sun and make it fast to this planet,
yet the British man alone spins a yarn in one year which will reach
fifty-one times the distance from the earth to the sun. So, having his
cable ready twisted and coiled, the fixed stars are virtually within
his grasp. He carries his lasso coiled at his saddle bow, but is never
forced to cast it.

All things are subdued to me by virtue of that coiled lasso I carry,
and I lead them without the trouble of a cast. It is the rope that lies
coiled on the deck, which moors my ship, and I have never to bend a
cable.

In God's hall hang cables of infinite length, and in His entries stand
bars of infinite strength; but those cables were never bent, nor those
bars ever poised, for all things have been subdued to the divinity from
the first, and these are the seals of His power.

The guilty never escape, for a steed stands ever ready saddled and
bridled at God's door, and the sinner surrenders at last.

_End of my Journal of 396 pages._

_Feb. 2. Tuesday._ It is easy to repeat, but hard to originate. Nature
is readily made to repeat herself in a thousand forms, and in the
daguerreotype her own light is amanuensis, and the picture too has more
than a surface significance,—a depth equal to the prospect,—so that the
microscope may be applied to the one as the spy-glass to the other. Thus
we may easily multiply the forms of the outward; but to give the within
outwardness, that is not easy.

That an impression may be taken, perfect stillness, though but for an
instant, is necessary. There is something analogous in the birth of all
rhymes.

Our sympathy is a gift whose value we can never know, nor when we impart
it. The instant of communion is when, for the least point of time, we
cease to oscillate, and coincide in rest by as fine a point as a star
pierces the firmament.

* * * * *

The stars are the mountain peaks of celestial countries.

* * * * *

A child asked its father what became of the old moon, and he said it
was cut up into stars.

* * * * *

There is always a single ear in the audience, to which we address
ourselves.

* * * * *

How much does it concern you, the good opinion of your friend? Therein
is the measure of fame. For the herd of men multiplied many times will
never come up to the value of one friend. In this society there is no
fame but love; for as our name may be on the lips of men, so are we in
each other's hearts. There is no ambition but virtue; for why should we
go round about, who may go direct?

All those contingencies which the philanthropist, statesman, and
housekeeper write so many books to meet are simply and quietly settled
in the intercourse of friends.

* * * * *

For our aspirations there is no expression as yet, but if we obey
steadily, by another year we shall have learned the language of last
year's aspirations.

* * * * *

When I read the other day the weight of some of the generals of the
Revolution, it seemed no unimportant fact in their biography. It is at
least one other means of comparing ourselves with them. Tell me how much
Milton or Shakespeare weighed, and I will get weighed myself, that I
may know better what they are to me.

Weight has something very imposing in it, for we cannot get rid of it.
Once in the scales we must weigh. And are we not always in the scales,
and weighing just our due, though we kick the beam, and do all we can
to heavy or lighten ourselves?

_Feb. 3. Wednesday._ The present seems never to get its due; it is the
least obvious,—neither before, nor behind, but within us. All the past
plays into this moment, and we are what we are. My aspiration is one
thing, my reflection another, but, over all, myself and condition is
and does. To men and nature I am each moment a finished tool,—a spade,
a barrow, or a pickaxe. This immense promise is no _efficient_ quality.
For all practical purposes I am done.

When we do a service to our neighbor, we serve our next neighbor.

* * * * *

We are constantly invited to be what we are; as to something worthy and
noble. I never waited but for myself to come round; none ever detained
me, but I lagged or tagged after myself.

* * * * *

It steads us to be as true to children and boors as to God himself. It
is the only attitude which will suit all occasions; it only will make
the earth yield her increase, and by it do we effectually expostulate
with the wind. If I run against a post, this is the remedy. I would
meet the morning and evening on very sincere ground. When the sun
introduces me to a new day, I silently say to myself, "Let us be
faithful all round; we will do justice and receive it." Something
like this is the secret charm of Nature's demeanor toward us, strict
conscientiousness [?] and disregard of us when we have ceased to have
regard for ourselves. So she can never offend us. How true she is!—and
never swerves. In her most genial moment her laws are as steadfastly
and relentlessly fulfilled—though the decalogue is rhymed and set to
sweetest music—as in her sternest.

* * * * *

Any exhibition of affection—as an inadvertent word, or act, or
look—seems premature, as if the time were not ripe for it; like the buds
which the warm days near the end of winter cause to push out and unfold
before the frosts are yet gone.

* * * * *

My life must seem as if it were passing at a higher level than that
which I occupy. It must possess a dignity which will not allow me to be
familiar.

* * * * *

The unpretending truth of a simile implies sometimes such distinctness
in the conception as only experience could have supplied. Homer could
not improve the simile of a soldier who was careful enough to tell the
truth. If he knows what it was, he will know what it was like.

* * * * *

As the ancient Britons were exhibited in Rome in their native costume,
and the Dacian came to display his swordsmanship in the arena, so
Tyrolese peasants have come farther yet, even from the neighborhood of
Rome to Concord, for our entertainment this night.

_Feb. 4. Thursday._ When you are once comfortably seated at a public
meeting, there is something unmanly in the sitting on tiptoe and _qui
vive_ attitude,—the involuntarily rising into your throat, as if gravity
had ceased to operate,—when a lady approaches, with quite godlike
presumption, to elicit the miracle of a seat where none is.

* * * * *

Music will make the most nervous chord vibrate healthily.

* * * * *

Such a state of unrest becomes only a fluttered virtue. When once I have
learned my place in the sphere, I will fill it once for all, rather
like a fixed star than a planet. I will rest as the mountains do, so
that your ladies might as well walk into the midst of the Tyrol, and
look for Nature to spread them a green lawn for their disport in the
midst of those solemn fastnesses, as that I should fly out of my orbit
at their approach and go about eccentric, like a comet, to endanger
other systems. No, be true to your instincts, and sit; wait till you can
be genuinely polite, if it be till doomsday, and not lose your chance
everlastingly by a cowardly yielding to young etiquette. By your look
say unto them, The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places, and I
will fill that station God has assigned me. As well Miss Cassiopeia up
there might ask the brazen-fronted Taurus to draw in his horns, that
she might shine in his stead. No, no! not till my cycle is completed.

How is it that motion will always find space to move in, and rest a
seat? Men hate antagonism, and the weaker will always yield to the
stronger. If a stranger enter with sufficient determination into a
crowded assembly, as if commissioned by the gods to find a seat there,
as the falling stone by a divine impulse seeks a resting-place, each
one will rise without thinking to offer his place. Now we have only to
be commissioned to sit, and depend upon it the gods will not balk their
own work. Ye came one day too late, as did the poet after the world
had been divided, and so returned to dwell with the god that sent him.
When presumptuous womanhood demands to surrender my position, I bide my
time,—though it be with misgiving,—and yield to no mortal shove, but
expect a divine impulse. Produce your warrant, and I will retire; for
not now can I give you a clear seat, but must leave part of my manhood
behind and wander a diminished man, who at length will not have length
and breadth enough to fill any seat at all. It was very kind in the gods
who gave us a now condition, or condition of rest, in which we might
unhurriedly deliberate before taking a step. When I give up my now and
here without having secured my then and there, I am the prodigal son of
a kind father and deserve no better than the husks which the swine eat,
nor that the fatted calf be killed for me.

Rest forever. When instinct comes to the rescue of your politeness, it
will seat you securely still, though it be to hang by a rail or poise
yourself on a stick. To do otherwise is to be polite only as the soldier
who runs away when the enemy demands his post. Politeness is rather
when the generals interchange civilities before the fight, not when one
returns a sword after the victory.

* * * * *

Not only in his cunning hand and brain, but when he speaks, too, does
man assert his superiority. He conquers the spaces with his voice, as
well as the lion. The voice of a strong man modulated to the cadence
of some tune is more imposing than any natural sound. The keeper's is
the most commanding, and is heard over all the din of the menagerie. A
strong, musical voice imposes a new order and harmony upon nature; from
it as a centre the law is promulgated to the universe. What it lacks
in volume and loudness may always be made up in musical expression and
distinctness. The brute growls to secure obedience; he threatens. The
man speaks as though obedience were already secured.

* * * * *

Brave speaking is the most entire and richest sacrifice to the gods.

_Feb. 5. Friday._ Only on rare occasions am I reminded that man too has
a voice, as well as birds and quadrupeds, which breaks on the stillness
of nature with its peculiar accent. The least sound pervades and
subdues all space to it as long as it fills my ear. Contrasted single
with the silence, it is as wide as it. Music is the crystallization of
sound. There is something in the effect of a harmonious voice upon the
disposition of its neighborhood analogous to the law of crystals; it
centralizes itself and sounds like the published law of things. If the
law of the universe were to be audibly promulgated, no mortal lawgiver
would suspect it, for it would be a finer melody than his ears ever
attended to. It would be sphere music.[204]

* * * * *

When by tutoring their voices singers enhance one another's performance,
the harmony is more complete and essential than is heard. The quire is
one family held together by a very close bond. Hence the romance we
associate with Gypsies and circus companies and strolling musicians.
The idea of brotherhood is so strong in them. Their society is ideal
for that one end.

There is something in this brotherhood—this feeling of kind, or
kindness—which insensibly elevates the subjects of it in our eyes.
However poor or mean, they have something which counterbalances our
contempt. This is that in the strolling pauper _family_ which does
not court our charity but can even bless and smile on us and make the
kindness reciprocal. It sanctifies the place and the hour.

These Rainers, if they are not brothers and sisters, must be uncles and
cousins at least. These Swiss who have come to sing to us, we have no
doubt are the flower of the Tyrol.[205] Such is the instinctive kindness
with which the foreigner is always received, that he is ever presumed
to be the fairest and noblest of his race. The traveller finds that it
is not easy to move away from his friends, after all, but all people
whom he visits are anxious to supply the place to him of his parents
and brothers and sisters. To these Swiss I find that I have attributed
all Tell's patriotism and the devotion of Arnold Winkelried and whatever
goodness or greatness belongs to the nation.

* * * * *

All costume off a man, when not simply doffed, is grotesque. There
must be a heart inside it. When these Swiss appear before me in gaiters
and high-crowned hats with feathers, I am disposed to laugh, but soon
I see that their serious eye becomes these and they it. It is the
sincere life passed within it which consecrates the costume of any
people. A sufficiently sober eye will retrieve itself and subordinate
any grotesqueness. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic in
the midst of his buffoonery, and his trappings and finery will serve
that mood too and with their drooping sympathy enhance the sincerity of
his misfortune. When the soldier is hit by a cannon-ball, rags are as
becoming as purple.[206] So soon as a man engages to eat, drink, sleep,
walk, and sit, and meet all the contingencies of life therein, his
costume is hallowed and a theme for poetry, whether it be a bear's skin
or ermine, a beaver hat or a Turkish turban. He will not wear anything
because it is blue, or black, or round, or square, but from a necessity
which cannot be superseded.

I look into the face and manners for something familiar and homely even,
to be assured that the costume of the foreigner is not whimsical or
finical.

* * * * *

In all emergencies there is always one step which you may take on firm
ground where gravity will assure you footing. So you hold a draft on
Fate payable at sight.

_Feb. 6. Saturday._ One may discover a new side to his most intimate
friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will
be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest
intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then. When I observe my
friend's conduct toward others, then chiefly I learn the traits in his
character, and in each case I am unprepared for the issue.

When one gets up to address briefly a strange audience, in that little
he may have opportunity to say he will not quite do himself injustice.
For he will instantly and instinctively average himself to his audience,
and while he is true to his own character still, he will in a few
moments make that impression which a series of months and years would
but expand. Before he answers, his thought like lightning runs round the
whole compass of his experiences, and he is scrupulous to speak from
that which he is and with a more entire truthfulness than usual. How
little do we know each other then! Who can tell how his friend would
behave on any occasion?

* * * * *

As for those Swiss, I think of the fields their hands have plowed and
reaped, and respect their costume as the memorial or rather cotemporary
and witness of this. What is there in a toga but a Roman? What but a
Quaker in a broad-brimmed hat? He who describes the dress of a Janizary
going to war does me a similar service as when he paints the scenery of
the battle-field. It helps make his exploit picturesque.

Costume is not determined by whim, not even the tattooing and paint
of the savage. Sun, wind, rain, and the form of our bodies shape our
hats and coats for us, more even than taste. Good taste secures the
utmost gratification without sacrificing any conveniences. If all
nations derived their fashions from Paris or London, the world would
seem like a Vanity Fair or all fools' day, and the Tartar and Bedouin
ride in it like jesters in a circus, and the Pawnee and Esquimau
hunt in masquerade. What I am must make you forget what I wear. The
fashionable world is content to be eclipsed by its dress, and never will
bear the contrast. Only industry will reform _their_ dress. They are
idle,—_exo_strious, building without.

* * * * *

The value of the recess in any public entertainment consists in the
opportunity for self-recovery which it offers. We who have been swayed
as one heart, expanding and contracting with the common pulse, find
ourselves in the interim, and set us up again, and feel our own hearts
beating in our breasts. We are always a little astonished to see a man
walking across the room, through an attentive audience, with any degree
of self-possession. He makes himself strange to us. He is a little
stubborn withal, and seems to say, "I am self-sustained and independent
as well as the performer, and am not to be swallowed up in the common
enthusiasm. No, no, there are two of us, and John's as good as Thomas."
In the recess the audience is cut up into a hundred little coteries,
and as soon as each individual life has recovered its tone and the
purposes of health have been answered, it is time for the performances
to commence again.

* * * * *

In a public performer, the simplest actions, which at other times are
left to unconscious nature, as the ascending a few steps in front of an
audience, acquire a fatal importance and become arduous deeds.

* * * * *

When I select one here and another there, and strive to join sundered
thoughts, I make but a partial heap after all. Nature strews her nuts
and flowers broadcast, and never collects them into heaps. A man does
not tell us all he has thought upon truth or beauty at a sitting, but,
from his last thought on the subject, wanders through a varied scenery
of upland, meadow, and woodland to his next. Sometimes a single and
casual thought rises naturally and inevitably with a queenly majesty and
escort, like the stars in the east. Fate has surely enshrined it in this
hour and circumstances for some purpose. What she has joined together,
let not man put asunder. Shall I transplant the primrose by the river's
brim, to set it beside its sister on the mountain? _This_ was the soil
it grew in, _this_ the hour it bloomed in. If sun, wind, and rain came
_here_ to cherish and expand it, shall not we come here to pluck it?
Shall we require it to grow in a conservatory for our convenience?

* * * * *

I feel slightly complimented when Nature condescends to make use of me
without my knowledge, as when I help scatter her seeds in my walk, or
carry burs and cockles on my clothes from field to field.[207] I feel
as though I had done something for the commonweal, and were entitled
to board and lodging. I take such airs upon me as the boy who holds a
horse for the circus company, whom all the spectators envy.

* * * * *

"Lu ral lu ral lu" may be more impressively sung than very respectable
wisdom talked. It is well-timed, as wisdom is not always.

* * * * *

All things prophesy but the prophet. In augury and divination nature
is put to the torture. In Ben Jonson's tragedy of "Catiline," Lentulus
makes answer to Catiline, who has bribed the augurs to say that he is
that third Cornelius who is to be king of Rome, "All prophecies, you
know, suffer the torture." He who inspects the entrails is _always_
bribed, but they are unbribable. He who seeks to know the future by
unlawful means has unavoidably subjected the oracle to the torture of
_private_ and _partial_ interests. The oracles of God serve the public
interest without fee. To the just and benevolent mind nature _declares_,
as the sun lights the world.

_Feb. 7. Sunday._ Without greatcoat or drawers I have advanced thus
far into the snow-banks of the winter, without thought and with
impunity.[208] When I meet my neighbors in muffs and furs and tippets,
they look as if they had retreated into the interior fastnesses from
some foe invisible to me. They remind me that this is the season of
winter, in which it becomes a man to be cold. For feeling, I am a piece
of clean wood of this shape, which will do service till it rots, and
though the cold has its physical effect on me, it is a kindly one, for
it "finds its acquaintance there." My diet is so little stimulating,
and my body in consequence so little heated, as to excite no antagonism
in nature, but flourishes like a tree, which finds even the winter
genial to its expansion and the secretion of sap. May not the body
defend itself against cold by its very nakedness, and its elements be
so simple and single that they cannot congeal? Frost does not affect
one but several. My body now affords no more pasture for cold than a
leafless twig.[209] I call it a protestant warmth. My limbs do not tire
as formerly, but I use myself as any other piece of nature, and from
mere indifference and thoughtlessness may break the timber.

It is the vice of the last season which compels us to arm ourselves for
the next. If man always conformed to Nature, he would not have to defend
himself against her, but find her his constant nurse and friend, as do
plants and quadrupeds.

* * * * *

In the sunshine and the crowing of cocks I feel an illimitable holiness,
which makes me bless God and myself. The warm sun casts his incessant
gift at my feet as I walk along, unfolding his yellow worlds. Yonder
sexton with a few cheap sounds makes me richer than these who mind his
summons. The true gift is as wide as my gratitude, and as frequent, and
the donor is as grateful as the recipient. There would be a New Year's
gift indeed, if we would bestow on each other our sincerity. We should
communicate our wealth, and not purchase that which does not belong to
us for a sign. Why give each other a sign to keep? If we gave the thing
itself, there would be no need of a sign.

* * * * *

I am not sure I should find out a really great person soon. He would be
simple Thomas or Oliver for some centuries first. The lesser eminences
would hide the higher, and I should at last reach his top by a gentle
acclivity. I felt it would be necessary to remain some weeks at the
Notch to be impressed by the grandeur of the scenery. We do not expect
that Alexander will conquer Asia the first time we are introduced to
him. A great man accepts the occasion the fates offer him. Let us not
be disappointed. We stand at first upon the pampas which surround him.
It is these mountains round about which make the valleys here below. He
is not a dead level, so many feet above low-water mark. Greatness is in
the ascent. But there is no accounting for the little men.

"They must sweat no less
To fit their properties, than t' express their parts."

Or the line before this:—

"Would you have
Such an Herculean actor in the scene,
And not his hydra?"—JONSON.

The eaves are running on the south side of the house; the titmouse
lisps in the poplar; the bells are ringing for church; while the sun
presides over all and makes his simple warmth more obvious than all
else.[210] What shall I do with this hour, so like time and yet so
fit for eternity? Where in me are these russet patches of ground, and
scattered logs and chips in the yard? I do not feel cluttered. I have
some notion what the John's-wort and life-everlasting may be thinking
about when the sun shines on me as on them and turns my prompt thought
into just such a seething shimmer. I lie out indistinct as a heath at
noonday. I am evaporating and ascending into the sun.

* * * * *

Nothing stands in the way to success, but to failure. To victory is
all the way up hill; to defeat the simplest wight that weighs may soon
slide down. Cowards would not have victory but the fruits of victory;
but she it is that sweetens all the spoil. Thus, by a just fate, the
booty cannot fall to him who did not win it. There is victory in every
effort. In the least swing of the arm, in indignant thought, in stern
content, we conquer our foes.

* * * * *

Great thoughts make great men. Without these no heraldry nor blood will
avail.

The blood circulates to the feet and hands, but the thought never
descends from the head.

* * * * *

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no
wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he
will want no other reward. Is not Friendship divine in this?

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend
is my amiableness personified.

And yet we walk the stage indifferent actors, not thinking what a
sublime drama we might enact if we would be joint workers and a mutual
material. Why go to the woods to cut timber to display our art upon,
when here are men as trees walking? The world has never learned what men
can build each other up to be, when both master and pupil work in love.

He that comes as a stranger to my house will have to stay as a stranger.
He has made his own reception. But persevering love was never yet
refused.

"The vicious count their years, virtuous their acts."

JONSON.

The former consider the length of their service, the latter its quality.

Wait not till I invite thee, but observe
I'm glad to see thee when thou com'st.[211]

The most ardent lover holds yet a private court, and his love can never
be so strong or ethereal that there will not be danger that judgment
may be rendered against the beloved.

* * * * *

I would have men make a _greater_ use of me.[212] Now I must belittle
myself to have dealings with them. My friend will show such a noble
confidence that I shall aspire to the society of his good opinion. Never
presume men less that you may make them more. So far as we respond to
our ideal estimate of each other do we have profitable intercourse.

* * * * *

A brave man always knows the way, no matter how intricate the roads.

_Feb. 8._ All we have experienced is so much gone within us, and there
lies. It is the company we keep. One day, in health or sickness, it will
come out and be remembered. Neither body nor soul forgets anything. The
twig always remembers the wind that shook it, and the stone the cuff it
received. Ask the old tree and the sand.

* * * * *

To be of most service to my brother I must meet him on the most equal
and even ground, the platform on which our lives are passing. But how
often does politeness permit this?

* * * * *

I seek a man who will appeal to me when I am in fault. We will treat as
gods settling the affairs of men. In his intercourse I shall be always a
god to-day, who was a man yesterday. He will never confound me with my
guilt, but let me be immaculate and hold up my skirts. Differences he
will make haste to clear up, but leave agreements unsettled the while.

* * * * *

As time is measured by the lapse of ideas, we may grow of our own force,
as the mussel adds new circles to its shell. My thoughts secrete the
lime. We may grow old with the vigor of youth. Are we not always in
youth so long as we face heaven? We may always live in the morning of
our days. To him who seeks early, the sun never gets over the edge of
the hill, but his rays fall slanting forever. His wise sayings are like
the chopping of wood and crowing of cocks in the dawn.

* * * * *

My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste,
gleanings from the field which in action I reap. I must not live for
it, but in it for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom daily I
send off this sheet postpaid. I am clerk in their counting-room, and
at evening transfer the account from day-book to ledger. It is as a
leaf which hangs over my head in the path. I bend the twig and write
my prayers on it; then letting it go, the bough springs up and shows
the scrawl to heaven. As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were
as public a leaf as any in nature. It is papyrus by the riverside;
it is vellum in the pastures; it is parchment on the hills. I find it
everywhere as free as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn.
The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and the wind blows the
leaves as far as I go. Or, if my imagination does not soar, but gropes
in slime and mud, then I write with a reed.

It is always a chance scrawl, and commemorates some accident,—as great
as earthquake or eclipse. Like the sere leaves in yonder vase, these
have been gathered far and wide. Upland and lowland, forest and field
have been ransacked.

* * * * *

In our holiest moment our devil with a leer stands close at hand. He
is a very busy devil. It gains vice some respect, I must confess, thus
to be reminded how indefatigable it is. It has at least the merit of
industriousness. When I go forth with zeal to some good work, my devil
is sure to get his robe tucked up the first and arrives there as soon
as I, with a look of sincere earnestness which puts to shame my best
intent. He is as forward as I to a good work, and as disinterested. He
has a winning way of recommending himself by making himself useful. How
readily he comes into my best project, and does his work with a quiet
and steady cheerfulness which even virtue may take pattern from.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me. It always
came in by a hand, and never panting, but with a curried coolness
halted, as if halting were the beginning not the end of the course.
It only runs the swifter because it has no rider. It never was behind
me but when I turned to look and so fell behind myself. I never did a
charitable thing but there he stood, scarce in the rear, with hat in
hand, partner on the same errand, ready to share the smile of gratitude.
Though I shut the door never so quick and tell it to stay at home like
a good dog, it will out with me, for I shut in my own legs so, and it
escapes in the meanwhile and is ready to back and reinforce me in most
virtuous deeds. And if I turn and say, "Get thee behind me," he then
indeed turns too and takes the lead, though he seems to retire with a
pensive and compassionate look, as much as to say, "Ye know not what ye
do."

Just as active as I become to virtue, just so active is my remaining
vice. Every time we teach our virtue a new nobleness, we teach our vice
a new cunning. When we sharpen the blade it will stab better as well
as whittle. The scythe that cuts will cut our legs. We are double-edged
blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our
vice. And when we cut a clear descending blow, our vice on t'other edge
rips up the work. Where is the skillful swordsman that can draw his
blade straight back out of the wound?[213]

Every man proposes fairly, and does not willfully take the devil for his
guide; as our shadows never fall between us and the sun. Go towards the
sun and your shadow will fall behind you.

_Feb. 9. Tuesday._

"_Cato._ Good Marcus Tullius (which is more than great),
Thou hadst thy education with the gods."

JONSON.

Better be defamed than overpraised. Thou canst then justly praise
thyself. What notoriety art thou that can be defamed? Who can be praised
for what they are not deserve rather to be damned for what they are. It
is hard to wear a dress that is too long and loose without stumbling.

"Whoe'er is raised,
For wealth he has not, he is tax'd, not prais'd,"

says Jonson. If you mind the flatterer, you rob yourself and still cheat
him. The fates never exaggerate; men pass for what they are. The state
never fails to get a revenue out of you without a direct tax. Flattery
would lay a direct tax. What I am praised for what I am not I put to
the account of the gods. It needs a skillful eye to distinguish between
their coin and my own. But however there can be no loss either way, for
what meed I have earned is equally theirs. Let neither fame nor infamy
hit you, but the one go as far beyond as the other falls behind. Let
the one glance past you to the gods, and the other wallow where it was
engendered. The home thrusts are at helmets upon blocks, and my worst
foes but stab an armor through.

* * * * *

My life at this moment is like a summer morning when birds are singing.
Yet that is false, for nature's is an idle pleasure in comparison: my
hour has a more solid serenity. I have been breaking silence these
twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it. Silence has
no end; speech is but the beginning of it. My friend thinks I _keep_
silence, who am only choked with letting it out so fast. Does he forget
that new mines of secrecy are constantly opening in me?

* * * * *

If any scorn your love, let them see plainly that you serve not them
but another. If these bars are up, go your way to other of God's
pastures, and browse there the while. When your host shuts his door on
you he incloses you in the dwelling of nature. He thrusts you over the
threshold of the world. My foes restore me to my friends.

* * * * *

I might say friendship had no ears as love has no eyes, for no word
is evidence in its court. The least act fulfills more than all words
profess. The most gracious speech is but partial kindness, but the least
genuine deed takes the whole man. If we had waited till doomsday it
could never have been uttered.

_Feb. 10. Wednesday._ That was fine praise which Ben Jonson gave to
Thomas, Lord Chancellor:—

"Whilst thou art certain to thy words, once gone,
As is thy conscience, which is always one."

Words do not lose their truth by time or misinterpretation, but stand
unscathed longer than he who spoke them.

Let our words be such as we may unblushingly behold sculptured in
granite on the walls to the least syllable. Our thoughts and actions
may be very private for a long time, for they demand a more catholic
publicity to be displayed in than the world can afford. Our best deeds
shun the narrow walks of men, and are not ambitious of the faint light
the world can shed on them, but delight to unfold themselves in that
public ground between God and conscience.

Truth has for audience and spectator all the world. Within, where I
resolve and deal with principles, there is more space and room than
anywhere without, where my hands execute. Men should hear of your virtue
only as they hear the creaking of the earth's axle and the music of
the spheres. It will fall into the course of nature and be effectually
concealed by publicness.

* * * * *

I asked a man to-day if he would rent me some land, and he said he had
four acres as good soil "as any outdoors." It was a true poet's account
of it. He and I, and all the world, went outdoors to breathe the free
air and stretch ourselves. For the world is but outdoors,—and we duck
behind a panel.

_Feb. 11._ True help, for the most part, implies a greatness in him who
is to be helped as well as in the helper. It takes a god to be helped
even. A great person, though unconsciously, will constantly give you
great opportunities to serve him, but a mean one will quite preclude
all active benevolence. It needs but simply and _greatly_ to want it for
once, that all true men may contend who shall be foremost to render aid.
My neighbor's state must pray to heaven so devoutly yet disinterestedly
as he never prayed in words, before my ears can hear. It must ask
divinely. But men so cobble and botch their request, that you must stoop
as low as they to give them aid. Their meanness would drag down your
deed to be a compromise with conscience, and not leave it to be done on
the high table-land of the benevolent soul. They would have you doff
your bright and knightly armor and drudge for them,—serve _them_ and
not God. But if I am to serve them I must not serve the devil.

What is called charity is no charity, but the interference of a
third person. Shall I interfere with fate? Shall I defraud man of the
opportunities which God gave him, and so take away his life? Beggars
and silent poor cry—how often!—"Get between me and my god." I will not
stay to cobble and patch God's rents, but do clean, new work when he
has given me my hands full. This almshouse charity is like putting new
wine into old bottles, when so many tuns in God's cellars stand empty.
We go about mending the times, when we should be building the eternity.

I must serve a strong master, not a weak one. Help implies a sympathy
of energy and effort, else no alleviation will avail.

_Feb. 12. Friday._ Those great men who are unknown to their own
generation are already famous in the society of the great who have gone
before them. All worldly fame but subsides from their high estimate
beyond the stars. We may still keep pace with those who have gone out
of nature, for we run on as smooth ground as they.

The early and the latter saints are separated by no eternal interval.

The child may soon stand face to face with the best father.

_Feb. 13._ By the truthfulness of our story to-day we help explain
ourselves for all our life henceforth. How we hamper and belay ourselves
by the least exaggeration! The truth is God's concern; He will sustain
it; but who can afford to maintain a lie? We have taken away one of the
Pillars of Hercules, and must support the world on our shoulders, who
might have walked freely upon it.

* * * * *

My neighbor says that his hill-farm is poor stuff and "only fit to hold
the world together."[214] He deserves that God should give him better
for so brave a treating of his gifts, instead of humbly putting up
therewith. It is a sort of stay, or gore, or gusset, and he will not
be blinded by modesty or gratitude, but sees it for what it is; knowing
his neighbor's fertile land, he calls his by its right name. But perhaps
my farmer forgets that his lean soil has sharpened his wits. This is a
crop it was good for. And beside, you see the heavens at a lesser angle
from the hill than from the vale.

* * * * *

We have nothing to fear from our foes; God keeps a standing army for
that service; but we have no ally against our friends, those ruthless
vandals whose kind intent is a subtler poison than the Colchian, a more
fatal shaft than the Lydian.[215]

_Feb. 14. Sunday._ I am confined to the house by bronchitis, and so
seek to content myself with that quiet and serene life there is in a
warm corner by the fireside, and see the sky through the chimney-top.
Sickness should not be allowed to extend further than the body. We
need only to retreat further within us to preserve uninterrupted the
continuity of serene hours to the end of our lives.

As soon as I find my chest is not of tempered steel, and heart of
adamant, I bid good-by to these and look out a new nature. I will be
liable to no accidents.

* * * * *

I shall never be poor while I can command a still hour in which to take
leave of my sin.

* * * * *

The jingling team which is creaking past reminds me of that verse in
the Bible which speaks of God being heard in the bells of the horses.

_Feb. 15._ There is elevation in every hour. No part of the earth is so
low and withdrawn that the heavens cannot be seen from it, but every
part supports the sky. We have only to stand on the eminence of the
hour, and look out thence into the empyrean, allowing no pinnacle above
us, to command an uninterrupted horizon. The moments will lie outspread
around us like a blue expanse of mountain and valley, while we stand
on the summit of our hour as if we had descended on eagle's wings. For
the eagle has stooped to his perch on the highest cliff and has never
climbed the rock; he stands by his wings more than by his feet. We shall
not want a foothold, but wings will sprout from our shoulders, and we
shall walk securely, self-sustained.

* * * * *

For how slight an accident shall two noble souls wait to bring them
together!

_Feb. 17._ Our work should be fitted to and lead on the time, as bud,
flower, and fruit lead the circle of the seasons.

* * * * *

The mechanic works no longer than his labor will pay for lights, fuel,
and shop rent. Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will
warrant the expense of nature? Will it maintain the sun's light?

* * * * *

Our actions do not use time independently, as the bud does. They should
constitute its lapse. It is their room. But they shuffle after and serve
the hour.

_Feb. 18. Thursday._ I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their
greatest deed is the impression they make on me. Some serene, inactive
men can do everything. Talent only indicates a depth of character in
some direction. We do not acquire the ability to do new deeds, but a new
capacity for all deeds. My recent growth does not appear in any visible
new talent, but its deed will enter into my gaze when I look into the
sky, or vacancy. It will help me to consider ferns and everlasting. Man
is like a tree which is limited to no age, but grows as long as it has
its root in the ground. We have only to live in the alburnum and not in
the old wood. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.

* * * * *

Sometimes I find that I have frequented a higher society during sleep,
and my thoughts and actions proceed on a higher level in the morning.

* * * * *

A man is the hydrostatic paradox, the counterpoise of the system. You
have studied flowers and birds cheaply enough, but you must lay yourself
out to buy him.

_Feb. 19._ A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It
is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay
it down and commence living on its hint. I do not see how any can be
written more, but this is the last effusion of genius. When I read an
indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring
volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is
slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere
in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be
practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with the
least regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting. So I
cannot stay to hear a _good_ sermon and applaud at the conclusion, but
shall be half-way to Thermopylæ before that.

* * * * *

When any joke or hoax traverses the Union in the newspapers it apprises
me of a fact which no geography or guide-book contains, of a certain
leisure and nonchalance pervading society. It is a piece of information
from over the Alleghanies, which I know how to prize, though I did
not expect it. And it is just so in Nature. I sometimes observe in
her a strange trifling, almost listlessness, which conducts to beauty
and grace,—the fantastic and whimsical forms of snow and ice, the
unaccountable freaks which the tracks of rabbits exhibit. I know now
why all those busy speculators do not die of fever and ague.

* * * * *

Coleridge observed the "landscapes made by damp on a whitewashed wall,"
and so have I.

* * * * *

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood,
and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.[216]

* * * * *

It is the unexplored grandeur of the storm which keeps up the spirits
of the traveller.[217] When I contemplate a hard and bare life in the
woods, I find my last consolation in its untrivialness. Shipwreck is
less distressing because the breakers do not trifle with us. We are
resigned as long as we recognize the sober and solemn mystery of nature.
The dripping mariner finds consolation and sympathy in the infinite
sublimity of the storm. It is a moral force as well as he. With courage
he can lay down his life on the strand, for it never turned a deaf ear
to him, nor has he ever exhausted its sympathy.

* * * * *

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages, but in vain; I
find no sea-room. But in great souls I sail before the wind without a
watch, and never reach the shore.

* * * * *

You demand that I be less your friend that you may know it.

* * * * *

Nothing will reconcile friends but love. They make a fatal mistake when
they go about like foes to explain and treat with one another. It is a
mutual mistake. None are so unmanageable.

_Feb. 20. Saturday._ I suspect the moral discrimination of the oldest
and best authors. I doubt if Milton distinguished greatly between his
Satan and his Raphael. In Homer and Æschylus and Dante I miss a nice
discrimination of the _important_ shades of character.

* * * * *

When I am going out for an evening I arrange the fire in my stove so
that I do not fail to find a good one when I return, though it would
have engaged my frequent attention present. So that, when I know I am to
be at home, I sometimes make believe that I may go out, to save trouble.
And this is the art of living, too,—to leave our life in a condition to
go alone, and not to require a constant supervision. We will then sit
down serenely to live, as by the side of a stove.

When I sit in earnest, nothing must stand, all must be sedentary with me.

* * * * *

I hear the faint sound of a viol and voices from the neighboring
cottage, and think to myself, "I will believe the Muse only for
evermore." It assures me that no gleam which comes over the serene soul
is deceptive. It warns me of a reality and substance, of which the best
that I see is but the phantom and shadow. O music, thou tellest me of
things of which memory takes no heed; thy strains are whispered aside
from memory's ear.

This is the noblest plain of earth, over which these sounds are borne,
the plain of Troy or Eleusis.

* * * * *

Thou openest all my senses to catch thy least hint, and givest me no
thought. It would be good to sit at my door of summer evenings forever
and hear thy strains. Thou makest me to toy with speech, or walk content
without it, not regretting its absence. I am pleased to think how
ignorant and shiftless the wisest are. My imperfect sympathies with my
friend are cheerful, glimmering light in the valley.

_Feb. 21. Sunday._ It is hard to preserve equanimity and greatness
on that debatable ground between love and esteem. There is nothing so
stable and unfluctuating as love. The waves beat steadfast on its shore
forever, and its tide has no ebb. It is a resource in all extremities,
and a refuge even from itself. And yet love will not be leaned on.

_Feb. 22._ Love is the tenderest mood of that which is tough—and the
toughest mood of that which is tender. It may be roughly handled as the
nettle, or gently as the violet. It has its holidays, but is not made
for them.

* * * * *

The whole of the day should not be daytime, nor of the night night-time,
but some portion be rescued from time to oversee time in. All our hours
must not be current; all our time must not lapse. There must be one hour
at least which the day did not bring forth,—of ancient parentage and
long-established nobility,—which will be a serene and lofty platform
overlooking the rest. We should make our notch every day on our
characters, as Robinson Crusoe on his stick. We must be at the helm at
least once a day; we must feel the tiller-rope in our hands, and know
that if we sail, we steer.

* * * * *

Friends will be much apart; they will respect more each other's privacy
than their communion, for therein is the fulfillment of our high aims
and the conclusion of our arguments. That we know and would associate
with not only has high intents, but goes on high errands, and has much
private business. The hours he devotes to me were snatched from higher
society. He is hardly a gift level to me, but I have to reach up to take
it. My imagination always assigns him a nobler employment in my absence
than ever I find him engaged in.[218]

We have to go into retirement religiously, and enhance our meeting by
rarity and a degree of unfamiliarity. Would you know why I see thee so
seldom, my friend? In solitude I have been making up a packet for thee.

* * * * *

The actions which grow out of some common but natural relations affect
me strangely, as sometimes the behavior of a mother to her children.
So quiet and noiseless an action often moves me more than many sounding
exploits.

_Feb. 23. Tuesday._ Let all our stores and munitions be provided for
the lone state.

* * * * *

The care of the body is the highest exercise of prudence. If I
have brought this weakness on my lungs, I will consider calmly and
disinterestedly how the thing came about, that I may find out the truth
and render justice. Then, after patience, I shall be a wiser man than
before.

Let us apply all our wit to the repair of our bodies, as we would mend a
harrow, for the body will be dealt plainly and implicitly with. We want
no moonshine nor surmises about it. This matter of health and sickness
has no fatality in it, but is a subject for the merest prudence.
If I know not what ails me, I may resort to amulets and charms and,
moonstruck, die of dysentery.

We do wrong to slight our sickness and feel so ready to desert our
posts when we are harassed. So much the more should we rise above our
condition, and make the most of it, for the fruit of disease may be as
good as that of health.[219]

* * * * *

There is a subtle elixir in society which makes it a fountain of
health to the sick. We want no consolation which is not the overflow
of our friend's health. We will have no condolence who are not dolent
ourselves. We would have our friend come and respire healthily before
us, with the fragrance of many meadows and heaths in his breath, and we
will inhabit his body while our own recruits.

Nothing is so good medicine in sickness as to witness some nobleness in
another which will advertise us of health. In sickness it is our faith
that ails, and noble deeds reassure us.

* * * * *

That anybody has thought of you on some indifferent occasion frequently
implies more good will than you had reason to expect. You have
henceforth a higher motive for conduct. We do not know how many amiable
thoughts are current.

_Feb. 26. Friday._ My prickles or smoothness are as much a quality of
your hand as of myself. I cannot tell you what I am, more than a ray
of the summer's sun. What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great
explainer. In the attempt to explain, shall I plane away all the spines,
till it is no thistle, but a cornstalk?

If my world is not sufficient without thee, my friend, I will wait
till it is and then call thee. You shall come to a palace, not to an
almshouse.

* * * * *

My homeliest thought, like the diamond brought from farthest within the
mine, will shine with the purest lustre.

Though I write every day, yet when I say a good thing it seems as if I
wrote but rarely.

* * * * *

To be great, we do as if we would be tall merely, be longer than we
are broad, stretch ourselves and stand on tiptoe. But greatness is well
proportioned, unstrained, and stands on the soles of the feet.

* * * * *

How many are waiting for health and warm weather! But they wait for none.

* * * * *

In composition I miss the hue of the mind. As if we could be satisfied
with the dews of the morning and evening without their colors, or the
heavens without their azure.[220]

* * * * *

This good book helps the sun shine in my chamber. The rays fall on its
page as if to explain and illustrate it.[221]

* * * * *

I who have been sick hear cattle low in the street, with such a healthy
ear as prophesies my cure. These sounds lay a finger on my pulse to
some purpose. A fragrance comes in at all my senses which proclaims
that I am still of Nature the child. The threshing in yonder barn and
the tinkling of the anvil come from the same side of Styx with me. If
I were a physician I would try my patients thus. I would wheel them to
a window and let Nature feel their pulse. It will soon appear if their
sensuous existence is sound. These sounds are but the throbbing of some
pulse in me.[222]

* * * * *

Nature seems to have given me these hours to pry into her private
drawers. I watch the shadow of the insensible perspiration rising from
my coat or hand on the wall. I go and feel my pulse in all the recesses
of the house and see if I am of force to carry a homely life and comfort
into them.

_Feb. 27. Saturday._ Life looks as fair at this moment as a summer's
sea, or a blond dress in a saffron light, with its sun and grass and
walled towns so bright and chaste, as fair as my own virtue which
would adventure therein. Like a Persian city or hanging gardens in the
distance, so washed in light, so untried, only to be thridded by clean
thoughts. All its flags are flowing, and tassels streaming, and drapery
flapping, like some gay pavilion. The heavens hang over it like some
low screen, and seem to undulate in the breeze.

Through this pure, unwiped hour, as through a crystal glass, I look out
upon the future, as a smooth lawn for my virtue to disport in. It shows
from afar as unrepulsive as the sunshine upon walls and cities, over
which the passing life moves as gently as a shadow. I see the course
of my life, like some retired road, wind on without obstruction into a
country maze.[223]

I am attired for the future so, as the sun setting presumes all men
at leisure and in contemplative mood,—and am thankful that it is
thus presented blank and indistinct. It still o'ertops my hope. My
future deeds bestir themselves within me and move grandly towards a
consummation, as ships go down the Thames. A steady onward motion I feel
in me, as still as that, or like some vast, snowy cloud, whose shadow
first is seen across the fields. It is the material of all things loose
and set afloat that makes my sea.

These various words are not without various meanings. The combined
voice of the race makes nicer distinctions than any individual. There
are the words "diversion" and "amusement." It takes more to amuse than
to divert. We must be surrendered to our amusements, but only turned
aside to our diversions. We have no will in the former, but oversee
the latter. We are oftenest diverted in the street, but amused in our
chambers. We are diverted from our engagements, but amused when we
are listless. We may be diverted from an amusement, and amused by a
diversion. It often happens that a diversion becomes our amusement, and
our amusement our employment.

_Feb. 28._ Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks.
The best you can write will be the best you are. Every sentence is
the result of a long probation. The author's character is read from
title-page to end. Of this he never corrects the proofs. We read it
as the essential character of a handwriting without regard to the
flourishes. And so of the rest of our actions; it runs as straight as
a ruled line through them all, no matter how many curvets about it. Our
whole life is taxed for the least thing well done; it is its net result.
How we eat, drink, sleep, and use our desultory hours, now in these
indifferent days, with no eye to observe and no occasion [to] excite
us, determines our authority and capacity for the time to come.

_March 3._ I hear a man blowing a horn this still evening, and it sounds
like the plaint of nature in these times. In this, which I refer to
some man, there is something greater than any man. It is as if the earth
spoke. It adds a great remoteness to the horizon, and its very distance
is grand, as when one draws back the head to speak. That which I now
hear in the west seems like an invitation to the east. It runs round the
earth as a whisper gallery. It is the spirit of the West calling to the
spirit of the East, or else it is the rattling of some team lagging in
Day's train. Coming to me through the darkness and silence, all things
great seem transpiring there. It is friendly as a distant hermit's
taper. When it is trilled, or undulates, the heavens are crumpled into
time, and successive waves flow across them.

It is a strangely healthy sound for these disjointed times. It is a
rare soundness when cow-bells and horns are heard from over the fields.
And now I see the beauty and full meaning of that word "sound." Nature
always possesses a certain sonorousness, as in the hum of insects, the
booming of ice, the crowing of cocks in the morning, and the barking of
dogs in the night, which indicates her sound state.[224] God's voice
is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonderful health, a cordial,
in sound. The effect of the slightest tinkling in the horizon measures
my own soundness. I thank God for sound; it always mounts, and makes
me mount. I think I will not trouble myself for any wealth, when I can
be so cheaply enriched. Here I contemplate to drudge that I may own a
farm—and may have such a limitless estate for the listening. All good
things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

* * * * *

As for these communities, I think I had rather keep bachelor's hall
in hell than go to board in heaven. Do you think your virtue will be
boarded with you? It will never live on the interest of your money,
depend upon it. The boarder has no home. In heaven I hope to bake my
own bread and clean my own linen. The tomb is the only boarding-house
in which a hundred are served at once. In the catacomb we may dwell
together and prop one another without loss.

_March 4._ Ben Jonson says in his epigrams,—

"He makes himself a thorough-fare of Vice."

This is true, for by vice the substance of a man is not changed, but
all his pores, and cavities, and avenues are prophaned by being made
the thoroughfares of vice. He is the highway of his vice. The searching
devil courses through and through him. His flesh and blood and bones
are cheapened. He is all trivial, a place where three highways of sin
meet. So is another the thoroughfare of virtue, and virtue circulates
through all his aisles like a wind, and he is hallowed.

* * * * *

We reprove each other unconsciously by our own behavior. Our very
carriage and demeanor in the streets should be a reprimand that will go
to the conscience of every beholder. An infusion of love from a great
soul gives a color to our faults, which will discover them, as lunar
caustic detects impurities in water.

* * * * *

The best will not seem to go contrary to others, but, as if _they_ could
afford to travel the same way, they go a parallel but higher course, a
sort of upper road. Jonson says,—

"That to the vulgar canst thyself apply,
Treading a better path not contrary."

Their way is a mountain slope, a river valley's course, a tide which
mingles a myriad lesser currents.

_March 5. Friday._ How can our love increase, unless our loveliness
increase also? We must securely love each other as we love God, with no
more danger that our love be unrequited or ill-bestowed. There is that
in my friend before which I must first decay and prove untrue. Love is
the least moral and the most. Are the best good in their love? or the
worst, bad?

_March 6._ An honest misunderstanding is often the ground of future
intercourse.

"THE SPHINX"[225]

_March 7, 8, 9, 10._ The Sphinx is man's insatiable and questioning
spirit, which still, as of old, stands by the roadside in us and
proposes the riddle of life to every passer. The ancients represented
this by a monster who was a riddle of herself, having a body composed of
various creatures, as if to hint that she had no individual existence,
but was nearly allied to and brooded over all. They made her devour
those who were unable to explain her enigmas, as we are devoured by
doubt, and struggle towards the light, as if to be assured of our lives.
For we live by confidence, and our bravery is in some moment when we are
certain to that degree that our certainty cannot be increased; as, when
a ray bursts through a gap in a cloud, it darts as far, and reaches the
earth as surely, as the whole sun would have done.

1. In the first four lines is described the mood in which the Sphinx
bestirs herself in us. We must look on the world with a drowsy and
half-shut eye, that it may not be too much in our eye, and rather stand
aloof from than within it. When we are awake to the real world, we are
asleep to the actual. The sinful drowse to eternity, the virtuous to
time. Menu says that the "supreme omnipresent intelligence" is "a spirit
which can only be conceived by a mind _slumbering_." Wisdom and holiness
always slumber; they are never active in the ways of the world. As in
our night-dreams we are nearest to awakening, so in our day-dreams
we are nearest to a supernatural awakening, and the plain and flat
satisfactoriness of life becomes so significant as to be questioned.

The Sphinx hints that in the ages her secret is kept, but in the
annihilation of ages alone is it revealed. So far from solving the
problem of life, Time only serves to propose and keep it in. Time
waits but for its solution to become eternity. Its lapse is measured
by the successive failures to answer the incessant question, and the
generations of men are the unskillful passengers devoured.

2. She hints generally at man's mystery. He knows only that he is, not
what, nor whence. Not only is he curiously and wonderfully wrought, but
with Dædalian intricacy. He is lost in himself as a labyrinth and has
no clue to get out by. If he could get out of his humanity, he would
have got out of nature. "Dædalian" expresses both the skill and the
inscrutable design of the builder.

The insolubleness of the riddle is only more forcibly expressed by the
lines,—

"Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep."

They express the complete uncertainty and renunciation of knowledge of
the propounder.

3, 4, 5, 6. In these verses is described the integrity of all animate
and inanimate things but man,—how each is a problem of itself and
not the solution of one and presides over and uses the mystery of the
universe as unhesitatingly as if it were the partner of God; how, by a
sort of _essential and practical faith_, each understands all, for to
see that we understand is to know that we misunderstand. Each natural
object is an end to itself. A brave, undoubting life do they all live,
and are content to be a part of the mystery which is God, and throw the
responsibility on man of explaining them and himself too.

3. The outlines of the trees are as correct as if ruled by God on the
sky. The motions of quadrupeds and birds Nature never thinks to mend,
but they are a last copy and the flourishes of His hand.

4. The waves lapse with such a melody on the shore as shows that they
have long been at one with Nature. Theirs is as perfect play as if
the heavens and earth were not. They meet with a sweet difference
and independently, as old playfellows. Nothing do they lack more than
the world. The ripple is proud to be a ripple and balances the sea.
The atoms, which are in such a continual flux, notwithstanding their
minuteness, have a certain essential valor and independence. They have
the integrity of worlds, and attract and repel firmly as such. The least
has more manhood than Democritus.

5. So also in Nature the perfection of the whole is the perfection of
the parts, and what is itself perfect serves to adorn and set off all
the rest. Her distinctions are but reliefs. Night veileth the morning
for the morning's sake, and the vapor adds a new attraction to the hill.
Nature looks like a conspiracy for the advantage of all her parts;
when one feature shines, all the rest seem suborned to heighten its
charm. In her circle each gladly gives precedence to the other. Day
gladly alternates with night. Behind these the vapor atones to the hill
for its interference, and this harmonious scene is the effect of that
at-one-ment.

6. In a sense the babe takes its departure from Nature as the grown man
his departure out of her, and so during its nonage is at one with her,
and as a part of herself. It is indeed the very flower and blossom of
Nature.

"Shines the peace of all being
Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the _sum_ of the world
In soft _miniature_ lies."[226]

To the charming consistency of the palm and thrush, this universal and
serene beauty is added, as all the leaves of the tree flower in the
blossom.

7. But alas, the fruit to be matured in these petals is fated to break
the stem which holds it to universal consistency. It passes _through
Nature_ to manhood, and becomes unnatural, without being as yet quite
supernatural. Man's most approved life is but conformity, not a simple
and independent consistency, which would make all things conform to it.
His actions do not adorn Nature nor one another, nor does she exist in
harmony but in contrast with them. She is not their willing scenery.
We conceive that if a true action were to be performed it would be
assisted by Nature, and perhaps be fondled and reflected many times as
the rainbow. The sun is a true light for the trees in a picture, but
not for the actions of men. They will not bear so strong a light as
the stubble; the universe has little sympathy with them, and sooner or
later they rebound hollowly on the memory. The April shower should be
as reviving to our life as to the garden and the grove, and the scenery
in which we live reflect our own beauty, as the dewdrop the flower. It
is the actual man, not the actual Nature, that hurts the romance of the
landscape. "He poisons the ground." The haymakers must be lost in the
grass of the meadow. They may be Faustus and Amyntas here, but near at
hand they are Reuben and Jonas. The woodcutter must not be better than
the wood, lest he be _worse_. Neither will bear to be considered as a
distinct feature. Man's works must lie in the bosom of Nature, cottages
be buried in trees, or under vines and moss, like rocks, that they
may not outrage the landscape. The hunter must be dressed in Lincoln
green, with a plume of eagle's feathers, to imbosom him in Nature.
So the skillful painter secures the distinctness of the whole by the
indistinctness of the parts. We can endure best to consider our repose
and silence. Only when the city, the hamlet, or the cottage is viewed
from a distance does man's life seem in harmony with the universe; but
seen closely his actions have no eagle's feathers or Lincoln green to
redeem them. The sunlight on cities at a distance is a deceptive beauty,
but foretells the final harmony of man with Nature.

Man as he is, is not the subject of any art, strictly speaking. The
naturalist pursues his study with love, but the moralist persecutes
his with hate. In man is the material of a picture, with a design
partly sketched, but Nature is such a picture drawn and colored. He is
a studio, Nature a gallery. If men were not idealists, no sonnets to
beautiful persons nor eulogies on worthy ones would ever be written.
We wait for the preacher to express _such_ love for his congregation as
the botanist for his herbarium.

8. Man, however, detects something in the lingering ineradicable
sympathy of Nature which seems to side with him against the stern
decrees of the soul. Her essential friendliness is only the more
apparent to his waywardness, for disease and sorrow are but a rupture
with her. In proportion as he renounces his will, she repairs his hurts,
and, if she burns, does oftener warm, if she freezes, oftener refreshes.
This is the motherliness which the poet personifies, and the Sphinx, or
wisely inquiring man, makes express a real concern for him. Nature shows
us a stern kindness, and only we are unkind. She endures long with us,
and though the severity of her law is unrelaxed, yet its evenness and
impartiality look relenting, and almost sympathize with our fault.

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. But to the poet there are no riddles. They are
"pleasant songs" to him; his faith solves the enigmas which recurring
wisdom does not fail to repeat. Poetry is the only solution time can
offer. But the poet is soonest a pilgrim from his own faith. Our brave
moments may still be distinguished from our wise. Though the problem
is always solved for the soul, still does it remain to be solved by the
intellect. Almost faith puts the question, for only in her light can it
be answered. However true the answer, it does not prevent the question;
for the best answer is but plausible, and man can only tell his relation
to truth, but render no account of truth to herself.

9. Believe, and ask not, says the poet.

"Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time;
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime."

Nothing is plain but love.

10, 11, 12, 13. Man comes short, because he seeks perfection. He adorns
no world, while he is seeking to adorn a better. His best actions have
no reference to their actual scenery. For when our actions become of
that worth that they might confer a grace on Nature, they pass out of
her into a higher arena, where they are still mean and awkward. So that
the world beholds only the rear of great deeds, and mistakes them often
for inconsistencies, not knowing with what higher they consist. Nature
is beautiful as in repose, not promising a higher beauty to-morrow.
Her actions are level to one another, and so are never unfit or
inconsistent. Shame and remorse, which are so unsightly to her, have
a prospective beauty and fitness which redeem them. We would have our
lover to be nobler than we, and do not fear to sacrifice our love to
his greater nobleness. Better the disagreement of noble lovers than
the agreement of base ones. In friendship each will be nobler than the
other, and so avoid the cheapness of a level and idle harmony. Love will
have its chromatic strains,—discordant yearnings for higher chords,—as
well as symphonies. Let us expect no finite satisfaction.

13. Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see
no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the
same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

14. The poet concludes with the same trust he began with, and jeers at
the blindness which could inquire. But our sphinx is so wise as to put
no riddle that can be answered. It is a great presumption to answer
conclusively a question which any sincerity has put. The wise answer
no questions,—nor do they ask them. She silences his jeers with the
conviction that she is the eye-beam of his eye. Our proper eye never
quails before an answer. To rest in a reply, as a response of the
oracle, that is error; but to suspect time's reply, because we would not
degrade one of God's meanings to be intelligible to us, that is wisdom.
We shall never arrive at his meaning, but it will ceaselessly arrive to
us. The truth we seek with ardor and devotion will not reward us with a
cheap acquisition. We run unhesitatingly in our career, not fearing to
pass any goal of truth in our haste. We career toward her eternally. A
truth rested in stands for all the vice of an age, and revolution comes
kindly to restore health.

16. The cunning Sphinx, who had been hushed into stony silence and
repose in us, arouses herself and detects a mystery in all things,—in
infancy, the moon, fire, flowers, sea, mountain,—and,

(17) in the spirit of the old fable, declares proudly,—

"Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am."

When some Œdipus has solved one of her enigmas, she will go dash her
head against a rock.

* * * * *

You may find this as enigmatical as the Sphinx's riddle. Indeed, I doubt
if she could solve it herself.

_March 11. Thursday._ Every man understands why a fool sings.

_March 13. Saturday._ There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in
some books, which is very rare to find, and yet looks quite cheap. There
may be nothing lofty in the sentiment, or polished in the expression,
but it is careless, countrified talk. The scholar rarely writes as
well as the farmer talks. Homeliness is a great merit in a book; it is
next to beauty and a high art. Some have this merit only. A few homely
expressions redeem them. Rusticity is pastoral, but affectation merely
civil. The scholar does not make his most familiar experience come
gracefully to the aid of his expression, and hence, though he live in
it, his books contain no tolerable pictures of the country and simple
life. Very few men can speak of Nature with any truth. They confer no
favor; they do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than
they speak. You can get more nature out of them by pinching than by
addressing them. It is naturalness, and not simply good nature, that
interests. I like better the surliness with which the woodchopper
speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, than
the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the
primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose and nothing more, than
the victim of his bouquet or herbarium, to shine with the flickering
dull light of his imagination, and not the golden gleam of a star.

Aubrey relates of Thomas Fuller that his was "a very working head, in so
much, that walking and meditating before dinner, he would eat up a penny
loaf, not knowing that he did it. His natural memory was very great, to
which he added the art of memory. He would repeat to you forwards and
backwards all the signs from Ludgate to Charing-cross." These are very
good and wholesome facts to know of a man, as copious as some modern
volumes.

He also says of Mr. John Hales, that, "he loved Canarie" and was buried
"under an altar monument of black marble ... with a too long epitaph;"
of Edmund Halley, that he "at sixteen could make a dial, and then he
said he thought himself a brave fellow;" of William Holder, who wrote
a book upon his curing one Popham, who was deaf and dumb, "He was
beholding to no author; did only consult with nature." For the most
part an author but consults with all who have written before upon any
subject, and his book is but the advice of so many. But a true book will
never have been forestalled, but the topic itself will be new, and, by
consulting with nature, it will consult not only with those who have
gone before, but with those who may come after. There is always room
and occasion enough for a true book on any subject, as there is room for
more light the brightest day, and more rays will not interfere with the
first.[227]

How alone must our life be lived! We dwell on the seashore, and none
between us and the sea. Men are my merry companions, my fellow-pilgrims,
who beguile the way but leave me at the first turn in the road, for none
are travelling _one_ road so far as myself.

Each one marches in the van. The weakest child is exposed to the fates
henceforth as barely as its parents. Parents and relations but entertain
the youth; they cannot stand between him and his destiny. This is the
one bare side of every man. There is no fence; it is clear before him
to the bounds of space.

* * * * *

What is fame to a living man? If he live aright, the sound of no man's
voice will resound through the aisles of his secluded life. His life is
a hallowed silence, a fane. The loudest sounds have to thank my little
ear that they are heard.

_March 15._ When I have access to a man's barrel of sermons, which were
written from week to week, as his life lapsed, though I now know him
to live cheerfully and bravely enough, still I cannot conceive what
interval there was for laughter and smiles in the midst of so much
sadness. Almost in proportion to the sincerity and earnestness of the
life will be the sadness of the record. When I reflect that twice a week
for so many years he pondered and preached such a sermon, I think he
must have been a splenetic and melancholy man, and wonder if his food
digested well. It seems as if the fruit of virtue was never a careless
happiness.

A great cheerfulness have all great wits possessed, almost a prophane
levity to such as understood them not, but their religion had the
broader basis in proportion as it was less prominent. The religion I
love is very laic. The clergy are as diseased, and as much possessed
with a devil, as the reformers. They make their topic as offensive as
the politician, for our religion is as unpublic and incommunicable
as our poetical vein, and to be approached with as much love and
tenderness.

_March 17. Wednesday._ The stars go up and down before my only eye.
Seasons come round to me alone. I cannot lean so hard on any arm as on
a sunbeam. So solid men are not to my sincerity as is the shimmer of
the fields.

_March 19. Friday._ No true and brave person will be content to live
on such a footing with his fellow and himself as the laws of every
household now require. The house is the very haunt and lair of our vice.
I am impatient to withdraw myself from under its roof as an unclean
spot. There is no circulation there; it is full of stagnant and mephitic
vapors.

_March 20._ Even the wisest and best are apt to use their lives as the
occasion to do something else in than to live greatly. But we should
hang as fondly over this work as the finishing and embellishment of a
poem.

* * * * *

It is a great relief when for a few moments in the day we can retire
to our chamber and be completely true to ourselves. It leavens the rest
of our hours. In that moment I will be nakedly as vicious as I am; this
false life of mine shall have a being at length.

_March 21. Sunday._ To be associated with others by my friend's
generosity when he bestows a gift is an additional favor to be grateful
for.

_March 27. Saturday._ Magnanimity, though it look expensive for a short
course, is always economy in the long run. Be generous in your poverty,
if you would be rich. To make up a great action there are no subordinate
mean ones. We can never afford to postpone a true life to-day to any
future and anticipated nobleness. We think if by tight economy we
can manage to arrive at independence, then indeed we will begin to be
generous without stay. We sacrifice all nobleness to a little present
meanness. If a man charges you eight hundred pay him eight hundred
and fifty, and it will leave a clean edge to the sum. It will be like
nature, overflowing and rounded like the bank of a river, not close and
precise like a drain or ditch.

* * * * *

It is always a short step to peace—of mind.

* * * * *

Under this line there is or has been life; as, when I see the mole's
raised gallery in the meadow, I know that he has passed underneath.

* * * * *

I must not lose any of my freedom by being a farmer and landholder. Most
who enter on any profession are doomed men. The world might as well sing
a dirge over them forthwith. The farmer's muscles are rigid. He can do
one thing long, not many well. His pace seems determined henceforth;
he never quickens it. A very rigid Nemesis is his fate. When the right
wind blows or a star calls, I can leave this arable and grass ground,
without making a will or settling my estate. I would buy a farm as
freely as a silken streamer. Let me not think my front windows must face
east henceforth because a particular hill slopes that way. My life must
undulate still. I will not feel that my wings are clipped when once I
have settled on ground which the law calls my own, but find new pinions
grown to the old, and talaria to my feet beside.

_March 30. Tuesday._ I find my life growing slovenly when it does not
exercise a constant supervision over itself. Its duds accumulate. Next
to having lived a day well is a clear and calm overlooking of all our
days.

FRIENDSHIP

Now we are partners in such legal trade,
We'll look to the beginnings, not the ends,
Nor to pay-day, knowing true wealth is made
For current stock and not for dividends.

I am amused when I read how Ben Jonson engaged that the ridiculous masks
with which the royal family and nobility were to be entertained should
be "grounded upon antiquity and solid learning."[228]

ON THE SUN COMING OUT IN THE AFTERNOON

_April 1._

Methinks all things have travelled since you shined,
But only Time, and clouds, Time's team, have moved;
Again foul weather shall not change my mind,
But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I loved.

In reading a work on agriculture, I skip the author's moral reflections,
and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at
the profitable level of what he has to say. There is no science in men's
religion; it does not teach me so much as the report of the committee on
swine. My author shows he has dealt in corn and turnips and can worship
God with the hoe and spade, but spare me his morality.[229]

_April 3._ Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.[230]

_April 4. Sunday._ The rattling of the tea-kettle below stairs reminds
me of the cow-bells I used to hear when berrying in the Great Fields
many years ago, sounding distant and deep amid the birches. That cheap
piece of tinkling brass which the farmer hangs about his cow's neck has
been more to me than the tons of metal which are swung in the belfry.

They who prepare my evening meal below
Carelessly hit the kettle as they go,
With tongs or shovel,
And, ringing round and round,
Out of this hovel
It makes an Eastern temple by the sound.

At first I thought a cow-bell, right at hand
'Mid birches, sounded o'er the open land,
Where I plucked flowers
Many years ago,
Speeding midsummer hours
With such secure delight they hardly seemed to flow.

_April 5._ This long series of desultory mornings does not tarnish the
brightness of the prospective days. Surely faith is not dead. Wood,
water, earth, air are essentially what they were; only society has
degenerated. This lament for a golden age is only a lament for golden
men.

* * * * *

I only ask a clean seat. I will build my lodge on the southern slope
of some hill, and take there the life the gods send me. Will it not be
employment enough to accept gratefully all that is yielded me between
sun and sun?[231] Even the fox digs his own burrow. If my jacket and
trousers, my boots and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do.
Won't they, Deacon Spaulding?[232]

_April 7. Wednesday._ My life will wait for nobody, but is being matured
still irresistibly while I go about the streets and chaffer with this
man and that to secure it a living. It will cut its own channel, like
the mountain stream, which by the longest ridges and by level prairies
is not kept from the sea finally. So flows a man's life, and will
reach the sea water, if not by an earthy channel, yet in dew and rain,
overleaping all barriers, with rainbows to announce its victory. It
can wind as cunningly and unerringly as water that seeks its level; and
shall I complain if the gods make it meander? This staying to buy me a
farm is as if the Mississippi should stop to chaffer with a clamshell.

What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow than you see. Where
the off ox treads, there is it not, it is farther off; where the nigh
ox walks, it will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop
fails not. What of drought? What of rain? Is not my sand well clayed,
my peat well sanded? Is it not underdrained and watered?[233]

My ground is high,
But 'tis not dry,
What you call dew
Comes filtering through;
Though in the sky,
It still is nigh;
Its soil is blue
And virgin too.

* * * * *

If from your price ye will not swerve,
Why, then I'll think the gods reserve
A greater bargain there above,
Out of their sup'rabundant love
Have meantime better for me cared,
And so will get my stock prepared,
Plows of new pattern, hoes the same,
Designed a different soil to tame,
And sow my seed broadcast in air,
Certain to reap my harvest there.

_April 8._ Friends are the ancient and honorable of the earth. The
oldest men did not begin friendship. It is older than Hindostan and the
Chinese Empire. How long has it been cultivated, and is still the staple
article! It is a divine league struck forever. Warm, serene days only
bring it out to the surface. There is a friendliness between the sun
and the earth in pleasant weather; the gray content of the land is its
color.

* * * * *

You can tell what another's suspicions are by what you feel forced to
become. You will wear a new character, like a strange habit, in their
presence.

_April 9. Friday._ It would not be hard for some quiet brave man to leap
into the saddle to-day and eclipse Napoleon's career by a grander,—show
men at length the meaning of war. One reproaches himself with
supineness, that he too has sat quiet in his chamber, and not treated
the world to the sound of the trumpet; that the indignation which has
so long rankled in his breast does not take to horse and to the field.
The bravest warrior will have to fight his battles in his dreams, and
no earthly war note can arouse him. There are who would not run with
Leonidas. Only the third-rate Napoleons and Alexanders does history tell
of. The brave man does not mind the call of the trumpet nor hear the
idle clashing of swords without, for the infinite din within. War is but
a training, compared with the active service of his peace. Is he not at
war? Does he not resist the ocean swell within him, and walk as gently
as the summer's sea? Would you have him parade in uniform, and manœuvre
men, whose equanimity is his uniform and who is himself manœuvred?

* * * * *

The times have no heart. The true reform can be undertaken any morning
before unbarring our doors. It calls no convention. I can do two thirds
the reform of the world myself. When two neighbors begin to eat corn
bread, who before ate wheat, then the gods smile from ear to ear, for
it is very pleasant to them. When an individual takes a sincere step,
then all the gods attend, and his single deed is sweet.[234]

* * * * *

_April 10. Saturday._ I don't know but we should make life all too tame
if we had our own way, and should miss these impulses in a happier time.

* * * * *

How much virtue there is in simply seeing! We may almost say that the
hero has striven in vain for his pre-eminency, if the student oversees
him. The woman who sits in the house and _sees_ is a match for a
stirring captain. Those still, piercing eyes, as faithfully exercised
on their talent, will keep her even with Alexander or Shakespeare. They
may go to Asia with parade, or to fairyland, but not beyond her ray.
We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only
serve the eyes. The farthest blue streak in the horizon I can see, I
may reach before many sunsets. What I saw alters not; in my night, when
I wander, it is still steadfast as the star which the sailor steers by.

Whoever has had one thought quite lonely, and could contentedly digest
that in solitude, knowing that none could accept it, may rise to the
height of humanity, and overlook all living men as from a pinnacle.

* * * * *

Speech never made man master of men, but the eloquently refraining from
it.

_April 11. Sunday._ A greater baldness my life seeks, as the crest of
some bare hill, which towns and cities do not afford. I want a directer
relation with the sun.

FRIENDSHIP'S STEADFASTNESS

True friendship is so firm a league
That's maintenance falls into the even tenor
Of our lives, and is no tie,
But the continuance of our life's thread.

If I would safely keep this new-got pelf,
I have no care henceforth but watch myself,
For lo! it goes untended from my sight,
Waxes and wanes secure with the safe star of night.

See with what liberal step it makes its way,
As we could well afford to let it stray
Throughout the universe, with the sun and moon,
Which would dissolve allegiance as soon.

Shall I concern myself for fickleness,
And undertake to make my friends more sure,
When the great gods out of sheer kindliness,
Gave me this office for a sinecure?

* * * * *

Death cannot come too soon
Where it can come at all,
But always is too late
Unless the fates it call.

_April 15. Thursday._ The gods are of no sect; they side with no man.
When I imagine that Nature inclined rather to some few earnest and
faithful souls, and specially existed for them, I go to see an obscure
individual who lives under the hill, letting both gods and men alone,
and find that strawberries and tomatoes grow for him too in his garden
there, and the sun lodges kindly under his hillside, and am compelled
to acknowledge the unbribable charity of the gods.

Any simple, unquestioned mode of life is alluring to men. The man who
picks peas steadily for a living is more than respectable. He is to be
envied by his neighbors.

_April 16._ I have been inspecting my neighbors' farms to-day and
chaffering with the landholders, and I must confess I am startled to
find everywhere the old system of things so grim and assured. Wherever I
go the farms are run out, and there they lie, and the youth must buy old
land and bring it to. Everywhere the relentless opponents of reform are
a few old maids and bachelors, who sit round the kitchen fire, listening
to the singing of the tea-kettle and munching cheese-rinds.[235]

_April 18. Sunday._ We need pine for no office for the sake of a certain
culture, for all valuable experience lies in the way of a man's duty.
My necessities of late have compelled me to study Nature as she is
related to the farmer,—as she simply satisfies a want of the body.
Some interests have got a footing on the earth which I have not made
sufficient allowance for. That which built these barns and cleared the
land thus had some valor.[236]

* * * * *

We take little steps, and venture small stakes, as if our actions were
very fatal and irretrievable. There is no swing to our deeds. But our
life is only a retired valley where we rest on our packs awhile. Between
us and our end there is room for any delay. It is not a short and easy
southern way, but we must go over snow-capped mountains to reach the
sun.

_April 20._ You can't beat down your virtue; so much goodness it must
have.

* * * * *

When a room is furnished, comfort is not furnished.

* * * * *

Great thoughts hallow any labor. To-day I earned seventy-five cents
heaving manure out of a pen, and made a good bargain of it. If the
ditcher muses the while how he may live uprightly, the ditching spade
and turf knife may be engraved on the coat-of-arms of his posterity.

* * * * *

There are certain current expressions and blasphemous moods of viewing
things, as when we say "he is doing a good business," more prophane than
cursing and swearing. There is death and sin in such words. Let not the
children hear them.

_April 22. Thursday._ There are two classes of authors: the one write
the history of their times, the other their biography.

_April 23. Friday._ Any greatness is not to be mistaken. Who shall cavil
at it? It stands once for all on a level with the heroes of history. It
is not to be patronized. It goes alone.

* * * * *

When I hear music, I flutter, and am the scene of life, as a fleet of
merchantmen when the wind rises.

_April 24._ Music is the sound of the circulation in nature's veins.
It is the flux which melts nature. Men dance to it, glasses ring and
vibrate, and the fields seem to undulate. The healthy ear always hears
it, nearer or more remote.

* * * * *

It has been a cloudy, drizzling day, with occasional brightenings in
the mist, when the trill of the tree sparrow seemed to be ushering in
sunny hours.[237]

_April 25._ A momentous silence reigns always in the woods, and their
meaning seems just ripening into expression. But alas! they make no
haste. The rush sparrow,[238] Nature's minstrel of serene hours, sings
of an immense leisure and duration.

When I hear a robin sing at sunset, I cannot help contrasting the
equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. We return
from the lyceum and caucus with such stir and excitement, as if a crisis
were at hand; but no natural scene or sound sympathizes with us, for
Nature is always silent and unpretending as at the break of day. She
but rubs her eyelids.

* * * * *

I am struck with the pleasing friendships and unanimities of nature in
the woods, as when the moss on the trees takes the form of their leaves.

* * * * *

There is all of civilized life in the woods. Their wildest scenes have
an air of domesticity and homeliness, and when the flicker's cackle is
heard in the clearings, the musing hunter is reminded that civilization
has imported nothing into them.[239] The ball-room is represented by
the catkins of the alder at this season, which hang gracefully like a
lady's ear-drops.

All the discoveries of science are equally true in their deepest
recesses; nature there, too, obeys the same laws. Fair weather and foul
concern the little red bug upon a pine stump; for him the wind goes
round the right way and the sun breaks through the clouds.[240]

_April 26. Monday._ At R. W. E.'s.

The charm of the Indian to me is that he stands free and unconstrained
in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily
and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His
house is a prison, in which he finds himself oppressed and confined,
not sheltered and protected. He walks as if he sustained the roof; he
carries his arms as if the walls would fall in and crush him, and his
feet remember the cellar beneath. His muscles are never relaxed. It is
rare that he overcomes the house, and learns to sit at home in it, and
roof and floor and walls support themselves, as the sky and trees and
earth.

It is a great art to saunter.

_April 27._ It is only by a sort of voluntary blindness, and omitting
to see, that we know ourselves, as when we see stars with the side of
the eye. The nearest approach to discovering what we are is in dreams.
It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning
round. And foolish are they that look in glasses with that intent.

The porters have a hard time, but not so hard as he that carries his
own shoulders. That beats the Smyrna Turks. Some men's broad shoulders
are load enough. Even a light frame can stand under a great burden,
if it does not have to support itself. Virtue is buoyant and elastic;
it stands without effort and does not feel gravity; but sin plods and
shuffles. Newton needed not to wait for an apple to fall to discover
the attraction of gravitation; it was implied in the fall of man.

_April 28. Wednesday._ We falsely attribute to men a determined
character; putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them,
we presume we know them. Pity the man who has a character to support.
It is worse than a large family. He is silent poor indeed. But in
fact character is never explored, nor does it get developed in time,
but eternity is its development, time its envelope. In view of this
distinction, a sort of divine politeness and heavenly good breeding
suggests itself, to address always the enveloped character of a man. I
approach a great nature with infinite expectation and uncertainty, not
knowing what I may meet. It lies as broad and unexplored before me as
a scraggy hillside or pasture. I may hear a fox bark, or a partridge
drum, or some bird new to these localities may fly up. It lies out there
as old, and yet as new. The aspect of the woods varies every day, what
with their growth and the changes of the seasons and the influence of
the elements, so that the eye of the forester never twice rests upon
the same prospect. Much more does a character show newly and variedly,
if directly seen. It is the highest compliment to suppose that in the
intervals of conversation your companion has expanded and grown. It
may be a deference which he will not understand, but the nature which
underlies him will understand it, and your influence will be shed as
finely on him as the dust in the sun settles on our clothes. By such
politeness we may educate one another to some purpose. So have I felt
myself educated sometimes; I am expanded and enlarged.

_April 29._ Birds and quadrupeds pass freely through nature, without
prop or stilt. But man very naturally carries a stick in his hand,
seeking to ally himself by many points to nature, as a warrior stands by
his horse's side with his hand on his mane. We walk the gracefuler for
a cane, as the juggler uses a leaded pole to balance him when he dances
on a slack wire.

* * * * *

Better a monosyllabic life than a ragged and muttered one; let its
report be short and round like a rifle, so that it may hear its own echo
in the surrounding silence.

_April 30._ Where shall we look for standard English but to the words
of any man who has a depth of feeling in him? Not in any smooth and
leisurely essay. From the gentlemanly windows of the country-seat no
sincere eyes are directed upon nature, but from the peasant's horn
windows a true glance and greeting occasionally. "For summer being
ended, all things," said the Pilgrim, "stood in appearance with a
weather-beaten face, and the whole country full of woods and thickets
represented a wild and savage hue." Compare this with the agricultural
report.

_May 1. Saturday._ Life in gardens and parlors is unpalatable to me. It
wants rudeness and necessity to give it relish. I would at least strike
my spade into the earth with as good will as the woodpecker his bill
into a tree.[241]

WACHUSETT[242]

_May 2._

Especial I remember thee,
Wachusett, who like me
Standest alone without society.
Thy far blue eye,
A remnant of the sky,
Seen through the clearing or the gorge,
Or from the windows of the forge,
Doth leaven all it passes by.
Nothing is true
But stands 'tween me and you,
Thou western pioneer,
Who know'st not shame nor fear,
By venturous spirit driven
Under the eaves of heaven;
And canst expand thee there,
And breathe enough of air?
Upholding heaven, holding down earth,
Thy pastime from thy birth,
Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other;
May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

_May 3. Monday._ We are all pilots of the most intricate Bahama
channels. Beauty may be the sky overhead, but Duty is the water
underneath. When I see a man with serene countenance in the sunshine of
summer, drinking in peace in the garden or parlor, it looks like a great
inward leisure that he enjoys; but in reality he sails on no summer's
sea, but this steady sailing comes of a heavy hand on the tiller. We
do not attend to larks and bluebirds so leisurely but that conscience
is as erect as the attitude of the listener. The man of principle gets
never a holiday. Our true character silently underlies all our words and
actions, as the granite underlies the other strata. Its steady pulse
does not cease for any deed of ours, as the sap is still ascending in
the stalk of the fairest flower.

_May 6. Thursday._ The fickle person is he that does not know what is
true or right absolutely,—who has not an ancient wisdom for a lifetime,
but a new prudence for every hour. We must sail by a sort of dead
reckoning on this course of life, not speak any vessel nor spy any
headland, but, in spite of all phenomena, come steadily to port at last.
In general we must have a catholic and universal wisdom, wiser than
any particular, and be prudent enough to defer to it always. We are
literally wiser than we know. Men do not fail for want of knowledge,
but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference.[243] These low
weathercocks on barns and fences show not which way the general and
steady current of the wind sets,—which brings fair weather or foul,—but
the vane on the steeple, high up in another stratum of atmosphere, tells
that. What we need to know in any case is very simple.[244] I shall not
mistake the direction of my life; if I but know the high land and the
main,—on this side the Cordilleras, on that the Pacific,—I shall know
how to run. If a ridge intervene, I have but to seek, or make, a gap to
the sea.

_May 9. Sunday._ The pine stands in the woods like an Indian,—untamed,
with a fantastic wildness about it, even in the clearings. If an Indian
warrior were well painted, with pines in the background, he would seem
to blend with the trees, and make a harmonious expression. The pitch
pines are the ghosts of Philip and Massasoit. The white pine has the
smoother features of the squaw.

* * * * *

The poet speaks only those thoughts that come unbidden, like the wind
that stirs the trees, and men cannot help but listen. He is not listened
to, but heard. The weathercock might as well dally with the wind as a
man pretend to resist eloquence. The breath that inspires the poet has
traversed a whole Campagna, and this new climate here indicates that
other latitudes are chilled or heated.

* * * * *

Speak to men as to gods and you will not be insincere.

WESTWARD, HO!

The needles of the pine
All to the west incline.[245]

THE ECHO OF THE SABBATH BELL HEARD IN THE WOODS[246]

Dong, sounds the brass in the east,
As if for a civic feast,
But I like that sound the best
Out of the fluttering west.

The steeple rings a knell,
But the fairies' silvery bell
Is the voice of that gentle folk,
Or else the horizon that spoke.

Its metal is not of brass,
But air, and water, and glass,
And under a cloud it is swung,
And by the wind is rung,
With a slim silver tongue.

When the steeple tolls the noon,
It soundeth not so soon,
Yet it rings an earlier hour,
And the sun has not reached its tower.

_May 10. Monday._ A good warning to the restless tourists of these days
is contained in the last verses of Claudian's "Old Man of Verona."

"Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.
Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae."[247]

_May 23. Sunday._ Barn.—The distant woods are but the tassels of my eye.

Books are to be attended to as new sounds merely. Most would be put to
a sore trial if the reader should assume the attitude of a listener.
They are but a new note in the forest. To our lonely, sober thought the
earth is a wild unexplored. Wildness as of the jay and muskrat reigns
over the great part of nature. The oven-bird and plover are heard in the
horizon. Here is a new book of heroes, come to me like the note of the
chewink from over the fen, only over a deeper and wider fen. The pines
are unrelenting sifters of thought; nothing petty leaks through them.
Let me put my ear close, and hear the sough of this book, that I may
know if any inspiration yet haunts it. There is always a later edition
of every book than the printer wots of, no matter how recently it was
published. All nature is a new impression every instant.

* * * * *

The aspects of the most simple object are as various as the aspects
of the most compound. Observe the same sheet of water from different
eminences. When I have travelled a few miles I do not recognize the
profile of the hills of my native village.

_May 27. Thursday._ I sit in my boat on Walden, playing the flute this
evening, and see the perch, which I seem to have charmed, hovering
around me, and the moon travelling over the bottom, which is strewn
with the wrecks of the forest, and feel that nothing but the wildest
imagination can conceive of the manner of life we are living. Nature is
a wizard. The Concord nights are stranger than the Arabian nights.

We not only want elbow-room, but eye-room in this gray air which shrouds
all the fields. Sometimes my eyes see over the county road by daylight
to the tops of yonder birches on the hill, as at others by moonlight.

Heaven lies above, because the air is deep.

* * * * *

In all my life hitherto I have left nothing behind.

_May 31. Monday._ That title, "The Laws of Menu[248] with the Gloss of
Culluca," comes to me with such a volume of sound as if it had swept
unobstructed over the plains of Hindostan; and when my eye rests on
yonder birches, or the sun in the water, or the shadows of the trees, it
seems to signify the laws of them all. They are the laws of you and me,
a fragrance wafted down from those old times, and no more to be refuted
than the wind.

When my imagination travels eastward and backward to those remote years
of the gods, I seem to draw near to the habitation of the morning, and
the dawn at length has a place. I remember the book as an hour before
sunrise.

* * * * *

We are height and depth both, a calm sea at the foot of a promontory.
Do we not overlook our own depths?

_June 1._ To have seen a man out of the East or West is sufficient to
establish their reality and locality. I have seen a Mr. Wattles to-day,
from Vermont, and now know where that is and that it is; a reformer,
with two soldier's eyes and shoulders, who began to belabor the world
at ten years, a ragged mountain boy, as fifer of a company, with set
purpose to remould it from those first years.

* * * * *

The great person never wants an opportunity to be great, but makes
occasion for all about him.

_June 2. Wednesday._ I am brought into the near neighborhood and am
become a silent observer of the moon's paces to-night, by means of a
glass, while the frogs are peeping all around me on the earth, and the
sound of the accordion seems to come from some bright saloon yonder. I
am sure the moon floats in a human atmosphere. It is but a distant scene
of the world's drama. It is a wide theatre the gods have given us, and
our actions must befit it. More sea and land, mountain and valley, here
is,—a further West, a freshness and wildness in reserve when all the
land shall be cleared.

I see three little lakes between the hills near its edge, reflecting the
sun's rays. The light glimmers as on the water in a tumbler. So far off
do the laws of reflection hold. I seem to see the ribs of the creature.
This is the aspect of their day, its outside,—their heaven above their
heads, towards which they breathe their prayers. So much is between me
and them. It is noon there, perchance, and ships are at anchor in the
havens or sailing on the seas, and there is a din in the streets, and
in this light or that shade some leisurely soul contemplates.

But now dor-bugs fly over its disk and bring me back to earth and night.

_June 7. Monday._ The inhabitants of those Eastern plains seem to
possess a natural and hereditary right to be conservative and magnify
forms and traditions. "Immemorial custom is transcendent law," says
Menu. That is, it was the custom of gods before men used it. The fault
of our New England custom is that it is memorial. What is morality but
immemorial custom? It is not manner but character, and the conservative
conscience sustains it.[249]

We are accustomed to exaggerate the immobility and stagnation of those
eras, as of the waters which levelled the steppes; but those slow
revolving "years of the gods" were as rapid to all the needs of virtue
as these bustling and hasty seasons. Man stands to revere, he kneels
to pray. Methinks history will have to be tried by new tests to show
what centuries were rapid and what slow. Corn grows in the night.[250]
Will this bustling era detain the future reader longer? Will the earth
seem to have conversed more with the heavens during these times? Who
is writing better Vedas? How science and art spread and flourished,
how trivial conveniences were multiplied, that which is the gossip
of the world is not recorded in them; and if they are left out of our
scripture, too, what will remain?

Since the Battle of Bunker Hill we think the world has _not_ been at a
standstill.

When I remember the treachery of memory and the manifold accidents
to which tradition is liable, how soon the vista of the past closes
behind,—as near as night's crescent to the setting day,—and the dazzling
brightness of noon is reduced to the faint glimmer of the evening star,
I feel as if it were by a rare indulgence of the fates that any traces
of the past are left us,—that my ears which do not hear across the
interval over which a crow caws should chance to hear this far-travelled
sound. With how little coöperation of the societies, after all, is the
past remembered!

* * * * *

I know of no book which comes to us with grander pretensions than
the "Laws of Menu;" and this immense presumption is so impersonal and
sincere that it is never offensive or ridiculous. Observe the modes in
which modern literature is advertised, and then consider this Hindoo
prospectus. Think what a reading public it addresses, what criticism it
expects. What wonder if the times were not ripe for it?[251]

_June 8._ Having but one chair, I am obliged to receive my visitors
standing, and, now I think of it, those old sages and heroes must always
have met erectly.

_July 10 to 12._ This town, too, lies out under the sky, a port of entry
and departure for souls to and from heaven.[252]

A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem
inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be in Uranus, or it may be in
the shutter. It is the original sound of which all literature is but
the echo. It makes all fear superfluous. Bravery comes from further than
the sources of fear.

_Aug. 1. Sunday._ I never met a man who cast a free and healthy glance
over life, but the best live in a sort of Sabbath light, a Jewish
gloom. The best thought is not only without sombreness, but even without
morality. The universe lies outspread in floods of white light to it.
The moral aspect of nature is a jaundice reflected from man. To the
innocent there are no cherubim nor angels. Occasionally we rise above
the necessity of virtue into an unchangeable morning light, in which we
have not to choose in a dilemma between right and wrong, but simply to
live right on and breathe the circumambient air.[253] There is no name
for this life unless it be the very vitality of _vita_. Silent is the
preacher about this, and silent must ever be, for he who knows it will
not preach.

_Aug. 4. Wednesday._ My pen is a lever which, in proportion as the near
end stirs me further within, the further end reaches to a greater depth
in the reader.

* * * * *

Nawshawtuct.—Far in the east I read _Nature's Corn Law Rhymes_. Here,
in sight of Wachusett and these rivers and woods, my mind goes singing
to itself of other themes than taxation. The rush sparrow sings still
unintelligible, as from beyond a depth in me which I have not fathomed,
where my future lies folded up. I hear several faint notes, quite
outside me, which populate the waste.

This is such fresh and flowing weather, as if the waves of the morning
had subsided over the day.

_Aug. 6._ If I am well, then I see well. The bulletins of health are
twirled along my visual rays, like pasteboards on a kite string.

I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being
elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm
as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and seems as
superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour,
unworn by time, with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English
dress as indifferently as the Sanscrit. The great tone of the book is
of such fibre and such severe tension that no time nor accident can
relax it.[254] The great thought is never found in a mean dress, but
is of virtue to ennoble any language. Let it issue from the lips of
the Wolofs, or from the forum of Rome, the nine Muses will seem to
have been purveyors for it. Its education is always liberal; it has
all the graces of oratory and of poetry. The lofty tone which is its
indispensable breath is grace to the eye and music to the ear. It can
endow a college.[255]

* * * * *

So supremely religious a book imposes with authority on the latest
age. The very simplicity of style of the ancient lawgiver, implying
all in the omission of all, proves an habitual elevation of thought,
which the multiplied glosses of later days strive in vain to slope up
to. The whole book by noble gestures and inclinations seems to render
words unnecessary. The abbreviated sentence points to the thing for
explanation. As the sublimest thought is most faithfully printed in the
face, and needs the fewest interpreting words. The page nods toward the
fact and is silent.

As I walk across the yard from the barn to the house through the fog,
with a lamp in my hand, I am reminded of the Merrimack nights, and seem
to see the sod between tent-ropes. The trees, seen dimly through the
mist, suggest things which do not at all belong to the past, but are
peculiar to my fresh New England life. It is as novel as green peas.
The dew hangs everywhere upon the grass, and I breathe the rich, damp
air in slices.

_Aug. 7. Saturday._ The impression which those sublime sentences made on
me last night has awakened me before any cockcrowing. Their influence
lingers around me like a fragrance, or as the fog hangs over the earth
late into the day.

The very locusts and crickets of a summer day are but later or older
glosses on the Dherma Sástra of the Hindoos, a continuation of the
sacred code.[256]

_Aug. 9._ It is vain to try to write unless you feel strong in the
knees.

Any book of great authority and genius seems to our imagination to
permeate and pervade all space. Its spirit, like a more subtle ether,
sweeps along with the prevailing winds of the country. Its influence
conveys a new gloss to the meadows and the depths of the wood, and
bathes the huckleberries on the hills, as sometimes a new influence
in the sky washes in waves over the fields and seems to break on
some invisible beach in the air. All things confirm it. It spends the
mornings and the evenings.[257]

* * * * *

Everywhere the speech of Menu demands the widest apprehension and
proceeds from the loftiest plateau of the soul. It is spoken unbendingly
to its own level, and does not imply any contemporaneous speaker.

* * * * *

I read history as little critically as I consider the landscape, and
am more interested in the atmospheric tints and various lights and
shades which the intervening spaces create than in its groundwork
and composition. It is the morning now turned evening and seen in the
west,—the same sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty is like
the sunset; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat and bounded, but
atmospheric and roving, or free. But, in reality, history fluctuates as
the face of the landscape from morning to evening. What is of moment
in it is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures; we want not its
_then_, but its _now_. We do not complain that the mountains in the
horizon are blue and indistinct; they are the more like the heavens.

Of what moment are facts that can be lost,—which need to be
commemorated? The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead.
The Pyramids do not tell the tale confided to them. The living fact
commemorates itself. Why look in the dark for light? Look in the light
rather. Strictly speaking, the Societies have not recovered one fact
from oblivion, but they themselves are instead of the fact that is lost.
The researcher is more memorable than the researched. The crowd stood
admiring the mist and the dim outline of the trees seen through it, and
when one of their number advanced to explore the phenomenon, with fresh
admiration all eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. Critical
acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the _past_ cannot be
_presented_; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over
past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to
find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought,
you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle
is being fought, there are hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and
muse, and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs again.
Does Nature remember, think you, that they _were_ men, or not rather
that they _are_ bones?

Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It
is written as if the spectator should be thinking of the back side of
the picture on the wall, as if the author expected the dead would be
his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience. Men
seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries,
earnestly rebuilding the works behind, as they are battered down by the
incroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both
fall a prey to the enemy.

Biography is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography.
Let us not leave ourselves empty that, so vexing our bowels, we may go
abroad and be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
As if it were to dispense justice to all. But the time has not come for
that.[258]

_Aug. 12._ We take pleasure in beholding the form of a mountain in the
horizon, as if by retiring to this distance we had then first conquered
it by our vision, and were made privy to the design of the architect;
so when we behold the shadow of our earth on the moon's disk. When
we climb a mountain and observe the lesser irregularities, we do not
give credit to the comprehensive and general intelligence which shaped
them; but when we see the outline in the horizon, we confess that the
hand which moulded those opposite slopes, making one balance the other,
worked round a deep centre, and was privy to the plan of the universe.
The smallest of nature's works fits the farthest and widest view, as if
it had been referred in its bearings to every point in space.[259] It
harmonizes with the horizon line and the orbits of the planets.

_Aug. 13. Friday._ I have been in the swamp by Charles Miles's this
afternoon, and found it so bosky and sylvan that Art would never have
freedom or courage to imitate it. It can never match the luxury and
superfluity of Nature. In Art all is seen; she cannot afford concealed
wealth, and in consequence is niggardly; but Nature, even when she
is scant and thin outwardly, contents us still by the assurance of a
certain generosity at the roots. Surely no stinted hand has been at work
here for these centuries to produce these particular tints this summer.
The double spruce attracts me here, which I had hardly noticed in the
gardens, and now I understand why men try to make them grow about their
houses.[260]

Nature has her luxurious and florid style as well as Art. Having a
pilgrim's cup to make, she gives to the whole—stem, bowl, handle, and
nose—some fantastic shape, as if it were to be the car of a fabulous
marine deity,—a Nereus or Triton. She is mythical and mystical always,
and spends her whole genius upon the least work.[261]

_Aug. 16._ There is a double virtue in the sound that can wake an echo,
as in the lowing of the cows this morning. Far out in the horizon that
sound travels quite round the town, and invades each recess of the wood,
advancing at a grand pace and with a sounding Eastern pomp.

_Aug. 18._ I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and
my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and
fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear
the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were
breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much
as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks
and trees and beasts.[262] Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which
measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life's
stream.

* * * * *

Of all the duties of life it is hardest to be in earnest; it implies a
good deal both before and behind. I sit here in the barn this flowing
afternoon weather, while the school bell is ringing in the village, and
find that all the things immediate to be done are very trivial. I could
postpone them to hear this locust sing. The cockerels crow and the hens
cluck in the yard as if time were dog-cheap. It seems something worth
detaining time,—the laying of an egg. Cannot man do something to comfort
the gods, and not let the world prove such a piddling concern? No doubt
they would be glad to sell their shares at a large discount by this
time. Eastern Railroad stock promises a better dividend.

The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature.
They have not seen the west side of any mountain.

Day and night, mountain and wood, are visible from the wilderness as
well as the village. They have their primeval aspects, sterner, savager
than any poet has sung. It is only the white man's poetry. We want the
Indian's report. Wordsworth is too tame for the Chippeway.[263]

* * * * *

The landscape contains a thousand dials which indicate the natural
divisions of time; the shadows of a thousand styles point to the hour.
The afternoon is now far advanced, and a fresh and leisurely wind is
blowing on the river, causing long reaches of serene ripples. It has
done its stent, and seems not to flow but lie at its length reflecting
the light. The haze over the woods seems like the breath of all nature,
rising from a myriad pores into the attenuated atmosphere.[264] It is
sun smoke, the woof he has woven, his day's toil displayed.[265]

If I were awaked from a deep sleep, I should know which side the
meridian the sun might be by the chirping of the crickets. Night has
already insidiously set her foot in the valley in many places, where the
shadows of the shrubs and fences begin to darken the landscape. There
is a deeper shading in the colors of the afternoon landscape. Perhaps
the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon, not only because of the
greater transparency of the atmosphere then, but because we naturally
look most into the west,—as we look forward into the day,—and so in the
forenoon see the sunny side of things, but in the afternoon the shadow
of every tree.

What a drama of light and shadow from morning to night! Soon as the sun
is over the meridian, in deep ravines under the east side of the cliffs
night forwardly plants her foot, and, as day retreats, steps into his
trenches, till at length she sits in his citadel. For long time she
skulks behind the needles of the pine, before she dares draw out her
forces into the plain. Sun, moon, wind, and stars are the allies of one
side or the other.[266]

* * * * *

How much will some officious men give to preserve an old book, of which
perchance only a single [copy] exists, while a wise God is already
giving, and will still give, infinitely more to get it destroyed!

_Aug. 20. Friday._ It seems as if no cock lived so far in the horizon
but a faint vibration reached me here, spread the wider over earth as
the more distant.

In the morning the crickets snore, in the afternoon they chirp, at
midnight they dream.

_Aug. 24._ Let us wander where we will, the universe is built round
about us, and we are central still. By reason of this, if we look into
the heavens, they are concave, and if we were to look into a gulf as
bottomless, it would be concave also. The sky is curved downward to
the earth in the horizon, because I stand in the plain. I draw down its
skirts. The stars so low there seem loth to go away from me, but by a
circuitous path to be remembering and returning to me.[267]

_Aug. 28. Saturday._ A great poet will write for his peers alone, and
indite no line to an inferior. He will remember only that he saw truth
and beauty from his position, and calmly expect the time when a vision
as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.[268]

Johnson can no more criticise Milton than the naked eye can criticise
Herschel's map of the sun.

* * * * *

The art which only gilds the surface and demands merely a superficial
polish, without reaching to the core, is but varnish and filigree. But
the work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates
the lapse of time and has an ingrained polish, which still appears when
fragments are broken off, an essential quality of its substance. Its
beauty is its strength. It breaks with a lustre, and splits in cubes
and diamonds. Like the diamond, it has only to be cut to be polished,
and its surface is a window to its interior splendors.

* * * * *

True verses are not counted on the poet's fingers, but on his
heart-strings.

My life hath been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and live to utter it.[269]

In the Hindoo scripture the idea of man is quite illimitable and
sublime. There is nowhere a loftier conception of his destiny. He
is at length lost in Brahma himself, "the divine male." Indeed, the
distinction of races in this life is only the commencement of a series
of degrees which ends in Brahma.

The veneration in which the Vedas are held is itself a remarkable fact.
Their code embraced the whole moral life of the Hindoo, and in such a
case there is no other truth than sincerity. Truth is such by reference
to the heart of man within, not to any standard without. There is no
creed so false but faith can make it true.

In inquiring into the origin and genuineness of this scripture it is
impossible to tell when the divine agency in its composition ceased, and
the human began. "From fire, from air, and from the sun" was it "milked
out."

* * * * *

There is no grander conception of creation anywhere. It is peaceful
as a dream,[270] and so is the annihilation of the world. It is such a
beginning and ending as the morning and evening, for they had learned
that God's methods are not violent. It was such an awakening as might
have been heralded by the faint dreaming chirp of the crickets before
the dawn.

The very indistinctness of its theogony implies a sublime truth. It does
not allow the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, but directly
hints of a supremer still which created the last. The creator is still
behind, increate.[271] The divinity is so fleeting that its attributes
are never expressed.

_Aug. 30._ What is a day, if the day's work be not done? What are the
divisions of time to them who have nothing to do? What is the present
or the future to him who has no occasion for them, who does not create
them by his industry?

* * * * *

It is now easy to apply to this ancient scripture such a catholic
criticism as it will become the part of some future age to apply to the
Christian,—wherein the design and idea which underlies it is considered,
and not the narrow and partial fulfillment.

These verses are so eminently textual, that it seems as if those old
sages had concentrated all their wisdom in little fascicles, of which
future times were to be the commentary; as the light of this lower world
is only the dissipated rays of the sun and stars.[272] They seem to have
been uttered with a sober morning prescience, in the dawn of time.[273]
There is a sort of holding back, or withdrawal of the full meaning,
that the ages may follow after and explore the whole. The sentence opens
unexpensively and almost unmeaningly, as the petals of a flower.[274]

* * * * *

To our nearsightedness this mere outward life seems a constituent part
of us, and we do not realize that as our soul expands it will cast off
the shell of routine and convention, which afterward will only be an
object for the cabinets of the curious. But of this people the temples
are now crumbled away, and we are introduced to the very hearth of
Hindoo life and to the primeval conventicle where how to eat and to
drink and to sleep were the questions to be decided.[275]

* * * * *

The simple life herein described confers on us a degree of freedom even
in the perusal. We throw down our packs and go on our way unencumbered.
Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied that they seem like a more
refined pleasure and repleteness.[276]

_Sept. 1. Wednesday._ When I observe the effeminate taste of some of
my contemporaries in this matter of poetry, and how hardly they bear
with certain incongruities, I think if this age were consulted it would
not choose granite to be the backbone of the world, but Bristol spar or
Brazilian diamonds. But the verses which have consulted the refinements
even of a golden age will be found weak and nerveless for an iron one.
The poet is always such a Cincinnatus in literature as with republican
simplicity to raise all to the chiefest honors of the state.

Each generation thinks to inhabit only a west end of the world, and
have intercourse with a refined and civilized Nature, not conceiving
of her broad equality and republicanism. They think her aristocratic
and exclusive because their own estates are narrow. But the sun
indifferently selects his rhymes, and with a liberal taste weaves into
his verse the planet and the stubble.[277]

Let us know and conform only to the fashions of eternity.

* * * * *

The very austerity of these Hindoos is tempting to the devotional
as a more refined and nobler luxury.[278] They seem to have indulged
themselves with a certain moderation and temperance in the severities
which their code requires, as divine exercises not to be excessively
used as yet. One may discover the root of a Hindoo religion in his own
private history, when, in the silent intervals of the day or the night,
he does sometimes inflict on himself like austerities with a stern
satisfaction.

The "Laws of Menu" are a manual of private devotion, so private and
domestic and yet so public and universal a word as is not spoken in
the parlor or pulpit in these days.[279] It is so impersonal that it
exercises our sincerity more than any other. It goes with us into the
yard and into the chamber, and is yet later spoken than the advice of
our mother and sisters.[280]

_Sept. 2. Thursday._ There is but one obligation, and that is the
obligation to obey the highest dictate. None can lay me under another
which will supersede this. The gods have given me these years without
any incumbrance; society has no mortgage on them. If any man assist
me in the way of the world, let him derive satisfaction from the deed
itself, for I think I never shall have dissolved my prior obligations
to God. Kindness repaid is thereby annulled. I would let his deed lie
as fair and generous as it was intended. The truly beneficent never
relapses into a creditor; his great kindness is still extended to
me and is never done. Of those noble deeds which have me for their
object I am only the most fortunate spectator, and would rather be the
abettor of their nobleness than stay their tide with the obstructions
of impatient gratitude. As true as action and reaction are equal, that
nobleness which was as wide as the universe will rebound not on him the
individual, but on the world. If any have been kind to me, what more do
they want? I cannot make them richer than they are. If they have not
been kind, they cannot take from me the privilege which they have not
improved. My obligations will be my lightest load, for that gratitude
which is of kindred stuff in me, expanding every pore, will easily
sustain the pressure. We walk the freest through the air we breathe.

* * * * *

The sublime sentences of Menu carry us back to a time when purification
and sacrifice and self-devotion had a place in the faith of men, and
were not as now a superstition. They contain a subtle and refined
philosophy also, such as in these times is not accompanied with so lofty
and pure a devotion.

* * * * *

I saw a green meadow in the midst of the woods to-day which looked as if
Dame Nature had set her foot there, and it had bloomed in consequence.
It was the print of her moccasin.

* * * * *

Sometimes my thought rustles in midsummer as if ripe for the fall.[281]
I anticipate the russet hues and the dry scent of autumn, as the
feverish man dreams of balm and sage.

* * * * *

I was informed to-day that no Hindoo tyranny presided at the framing
of the world,—that I am a freeman of the universe, and not sentenced to
any caste.[282]

* * * * *

When I write verses I serve my thoughts as I do tumblers; I rap them to
see if they will ring.

_Sept. 3. Friday._ Next to Nature, it seems as if man's actions were the
most natural, they so gently accord with her. The small seines of flax
or hemp stretched across the shallow and transparent parts of the river
are no more intrusion than the cobweb in the sun. It is very slight and
refined outrage at most. I stay my boat in mid-current and look down in
the running water to see the civil meshes of his nets, and wonder how
the blustering people of the town could have done this elvish work. The
twine looks like a new river-weed and is to the river like a beautiful
memento of man, man's presence in nature discovered as silently and
delicately as Robinson discovered that there [were] savages on his
island by a footprint in the sand.[283]

* * * * *

Moonlight is the best restorer of antiquity. The houses in the village
have a classical elegance as of the best days of Greece, and this
half-finished church reminds me of the Parthenon, or whatever is most
famous and excellent in art.[284] So serene it stands, reflecting
the moon, and intercepting the stars with its rafters, as if it were
refreshed by the dews of the night equally with me. By day Mr. Hosmer,
but by night Vitruvius rather. If it were always to stand in this mild
and sombre light it would be finished already. It is in progress by day
but completed by night, and already its designer is an old master. The
projecting rafter so carelessly left on the tower, holding its single
way through the sky, is quite architectural, and in the unnecessary
length of the joists and flooring of the staging around the walls there
is an artistic superfluity and grace. In these fantastic lines described
upon the sky there is no trifling or conceit. Indeed, the staging for
the most part is the only genuine native architecture and deserves to
stand longer than the building it surrounds. In this obscurity there are
no fresh colors to offend, and the light and shade of evening adorn the
new equally with the old.

_Sept. 4. Saturday._ I think I could write a poem to be called
"Concord." For argument I should have the River, the Woods, the
Ponds, the Hills, the Fields, the Swamps and Meadows, the Streets and
Buildings, and the Villagers. Then Morning, Noon, and Evening, Spring,
Summer, Autumn, and Winter, Night, Indian Summer, and the Mountains in
the Horizon.

* * * * *

A book should be so true as to be intimate and familiar to all men,
as the sun to their faces,—such a word as is occasionally uttered to a
companion in the woods in summer, and both are silent.

* * * * *

As I pass along the streets of the village on the day of our annual
fair, when the leaves strew the ground, I see how the trees keep just
such a holiday all the year. The lively spirits of their sap mount
higher than any plowboy's let loose that day. A walk in the autumn
woods, when, with serene courage, they are preparing for their winter
campaign, if you have an ear for the rustling of their camp or an eye
for the glancing of their armor, is more inspiring than the Greek or
Peninsular war.[285] Any grandeur may find society as great as itself
in the forest.

* * * * *

Pond Hill.—I see yonder some men in a boat, which floats buoyantly amid
the reflections of the trees, like a feather poised in mid-air, or a
leaf wafted gently from its twig to the water without turning over. They
seem very delicately to have availed themselves of the natural laws, and
their floating there looks like a beautiful and successful experiment
in philosophy. It reminds me how much more refined and noble the life
of man might be made, how its whole economy might be as beautiful as a
Tuscan villa,[286]—a new and more catholic art, the art of life, which
should have its impassioned devotees and make the schools of Greece and
Rome to be deserted.

_Sept. 5. Saturday._ Barn.

Greater is the depth of sadness
Than is any height of gladness.

I cannot read much of the best poetry in prose or verse without feeling
that it is a partial and exaggerated plaint, rarely a carol as free
as Nature's. That content which the sun shines for between morning and
evening is unsung. The Muse solaces herself; she is not delighted but
consoled.[287] But there are times when we feel a vigor in our limbs,
and our thoughts are like a flowing morning light, and the stream
of our life without reflection shows long reaches of serene ripples.
And if we were to sing at such an hour, there would be no catastrophe
contemplated in our verse, no tragic element in it,[288] nor yet a
comic. For the life of the gods is not in any sense dramatic, nor can
be the subject of the drama; it is epic without beginning or end, an
eternal interlude without plot,—not subordinate one part to another,
but supreme as a whole, at once leaf and flower and fruit. At present
the highest strain is Hebraic. The church bell is the tone of all
religious thought, the most musical that men consent to sing. In the
youth of poetry, men love to praise the lark and the morning, but they
soon forsake the dews and skies for the nightingale and evening shades.
Without instituting a wider comparison I might say that in Homer there
is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern
and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men
cling to this old song, because they have still moments of unbaptized
and uncommitted life which give them an appetite for more. There is no
cant in him, as there is no religion. We read him with a rare sense of
freedom and irresponsibleness, as though we trod on native ground, and
were autochthones of the soil.[289]

* * * * *

Through the fogs of this distant vale we look back and upward to the
source of song, whose crystal stream still ripples and gleams in the
clear atmosphere of the mountain's side.

* * * * *

Some hours seem not to be occasion for anything, unless for great
resolves to draw breath and repose in, so religiously do we postpone
all action therein. We do not straight go about to execute our thrilling
purpose, but shut our doors behind us, and saunter with prepared mind,
as if the half were already done.[290]

Sometimes a day serves only to hold time together.[291]

_Sept. 12. Sunday._

Where I have been
There was none seen.

_Sept. 14._ No bravery is to be named with that which can face its own
deeds.

* * * * *

In religion there is no society.

* * * * *

Do not dissect a man till he is dead.

* * * * *

Love does not analyze its object.

* * * * *

We do not know the number of muscles in a caterpillar dead; much less
the faculties of a man living.

* * * * *

You must believe that I know before you can tell me.

* * * * *

To the highest communication I can make no reply; I lend only a silent
ear.

_Sept. 18. Saturday._ Barn.—It is a great event, the hearing of a bell
ring in one of the neighboring towns, particularly in the night. It
excites in me an unusual hilarity, and I feel that I am in season wholly
and enjoy a prime and leisure hour.

_Sept. 20. Monday._ Visited Sampson Wilder of Boston. His method of
setting out peach trees is as follows:—

Dig a hole six feet square and two deep, and remove the earth; cover
the bottom to the depth of six inches with lime and ashes in equal
proportions, and upon this spread another layer of equal thickness, of
horn parings, tips of horns, bones, and the like, then fill up with a
compost of sod and strong animal manure, say four bushels of hog manure
to a cartload of sod. Cover the tree—which should be budded at two years
old—but slightly, and at the end of two years dig a trench round it
three feet from the tree and six inches deep, and fill it with lime and
ashes.

For grapes:—

Let your trench be twelve feet wide and four deep, cover the bottom
with paving-stones six inches, then old bricks with mortar attached or
loose six inches more, then beef-bones, horns, etc., six more (Captain
Bobadil), then a compost similar to the preceding. Set your roots one
foot from the north side, the trench running east and west, and bury
eight feet of the vine crosswise the trench, not more than eight inches
below the surface. Cut it down for three or four years, that root may
accumulate, and then train it from the sun up an inclined plane.

_Sept. 28. Tuesday._ I anticipate the coming in of spring as a child
does the approach of some pomp through a gate of the city.

_Sept. 30._

Better wait
Than be too late.[292]

_Nov. 29. Cambridge._—One must fight his way, after a fashion, even in
the most civil and polite society. The most truly kind and gracious have
to be won by a sort of valor, for the seeds of suspicion seem to lurk in
every spadeful of earth, as well as those of confidence. The president
and librarian turn the cold shoulder to your application, though they
are known for benevolent persons. They wonder if you can be anything but
a thief, contemplating frauds on the library. It is the instinctive and
salutary principle of self-defense; that which makes the cat show her
talons when you take her by the paw.[293]

Certainly that valor which can open the hearts of men is superior to
that which can only open the gates of cities.[294]

You must always let people see that they serve themselves more than
you,—not by your ingratitude, but by sympathy and congratulation.

* * * * *

The twenty-first volume of Chalmers's English Poets contains Hoole's
and Mickle's Translations. In the shape of a note to the Seventh Book
of the Lusiad, Mickle has written a long "Inquiry into the Religious
Tenets and Philosophy of the Bramins."

_Nov. 30. Tuesday._ Cambridge.—When looking over the dry and dusty
volumes of the English poets, I cannot believe that those fresh and
fair creations I had imagined are contained in them. English poetry
from Gower down, collected into one alcove, and so from the library
window compared with the commonest nature, seems very mean. Poetry
cannot breathe in the scholar's atmosphere. The Aubreys and Hickeses,
with all their learning, prophane it yet indirectly by their zeal. You
need not envy his feelings who for the first time has cornered up poetry
in an alcove. I can hardly be serious with myself when I remember that
I have come to Cambridge after poetry; and while I am running over
the catalogue and collating and selecting, I think if it would not be
a shorter way to a complete volume to step at once into the field or
wood, with a very low reverence to students and librarians. Milton did
not foresee what company he was to fall into.[295] On running over the
titles of these books, looking from time to time at their first pages
or farther, I am oppressed by an inevitable sadness. One must have come
into a library by an oriel window, as softly and undisturbed as the
light which falls on the books through a stained window, and not by the
librarian's door, else all his dreams will vanish. Can the Valhalla be
warmed by steam and go by clock and bell?

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we
wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy
speech. Though the speech of the poet goes to the heart of things,
yet he is that one especially who speaks civilly to Nature as a second
person and in some sense is the patron of the world. Though more than
any he stands in the midst of Nature, yet more than any he can stand
aloof from her. The best lines, perhaps, only suggest to me that that
man simply saw or heard or felt what seems the commonest fact in my
experience.

One will know how to appreciate Chaucer best who has come down to
him the natural way through the very meagre pastures of Saxon and
ante-Chaucerian poetry. So human and wise he seems after such diet that
we are as liable to misjudge him so as usually.[296]

* * * * *

The Saxon poetry extant seems of a more serious and philosophical cast
than the very earliest that can be called English. It has more thought,
but less music. It translates Boëthius, it paraphrases the Hebrew Bible,
it solemnly sings of war, of life and death, and chronicles events.
The earliest English poetry is tinctured with romance through the
influence of the Normans, as the Saxon was not. The ballad and metrical
romance belong to this period. Those old singers were for the most part
imitators or translators.[297] Or will it not appear, when viewed at
a sufficient distance, that our brave new poets are also secondary as
they, and refer the eye that reads them and their poetry, too, back and
backward without end?

* * * * *

Nothing is so attractive and unceasingly curious as character. There
is no plant that needs such tender treatment, there is none that will
endure so rough. It is the violet and the oak. It is the thing we mean,
let us say what we will. We mean our own character, or we mean yours.
It is divine and related to the heavens, as the earth is by the flashes
of the Aurora. It has no acquaintance nor companion. It goes silent
and unobserved longer than any planet in space, but when at length it
does show itself, it seems like the flowering of all the world, and
its before unseen orbit is lit up like the trail of a meteor. I hear
no good news ever but some trait of a noble character. It reproaches me
plaintively. I am mean in contrast, but again am thrilled and elevated
that I can see my own meanness, and again still, that my own aspiration
is realized in that other. You reach me, my friend, not by your kind or
wise words to me here or there; but as you retreat, perhaps after years
of vain familiarity, some gesture or unconscious action in the distance
speaks to me with more emphasis than all those years. I am not concerned
to know what eighth planet is wandering in space up there, or when Venus
or Orion rises, but if, in any cot to east or west and set behind the
woods, there is any planetary character illuminating the earth.

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
Which outward nature wears,
For, as its hourly fashions change,
It all things else repairs.

My eyes look inward, not without,
And I but hear myself,
And this new wealth which I have got
Is part of my own pelf.

For while I look for change abroad,
I can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Lumines my inmost mind,

As, when the sun streams through the wood,
Upon a winter's morn,
Where'er his silent beams may stray
The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known
The morning breeze would come,
Or simple flowers anticipate
The insect's noonday hum,

Till that new light with morning cheer
From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
For many stretching miles?[298]

_[Dec.] 12. Sunday._ All music is only a sweet striving to express
character. Now that lately I have heard of some traits in the character
of a fair and earnest maiden whom I had only known superficially, but
who has gone hence to make herself more known by distance, they sound
like strains of a wild harp music. They make all persons and places
who had thus forgotten her to seem late and behindhand. Every maiden
conceals a fairer flower and more luscious fruit than any calyx in the
field, and if she go with averted face, confiding in her own purity and
high resolves, she will make the heavens retrospective, and all nature
will humbly confess its queen.[299]

There is apology enough for all the deficiency and shortcoming in the
world in the patient waiting of any bud of character to unfold itself.

Only character can command our reverent love. It is all mysteries in
itself.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds
And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
With its unchanging ray?

I've felt within my inmost soul
Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
I've seen such morning hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,
When the first birds awake,
Is heard within some silent wood
Where they the small twigs break;

Or in the eastern skies is seen
Before the sun appears,
Foretelling of the summer heats
Which far away he bears.

P. M. Walden.—I seem to discern the very form of the wind when, blowing
over the hills, it falls in broad flakes upon the surface of the pond,
this subtle element obeying the same law with the least subtle. As it
falls it spreads itself like a mass of lead dropped upon an anvil. I
cannot help being encouraged by this blithe activity in the elements in
these degenerate days of men. Who hears the rippling of the rivers will
not utterly despair of anything. The wind in the wood yonder sounds like
an incessant waterfall, the water dashing and roaring among rocks.

_[Dec.] 13. Monday._ We constantly anticipate repose. Yet it surely
can only be the repose that is in entire and healthy activity. It must
be a repose without rust. What is leisure but opportunity for more
complete and entire action? Our energies pine for exercise. That time
we spend in our duties is so much leisure, so that there is no man but
has sufficient of it.

I make my own time, I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature
can ever get the start of me.

* * * * *

This ancient Scotch poetry, at which its contemporaries so marvelled,
sounds like the uncertain lisping of a child. When man's speech
flows freest it but stutters and stammers. There is never a free and
clear deliverance; but, read now when the illusion of smooth verse
is destroyed by the antique spelling, the sense is seen to stammer
and stumble all the plainer. To how few thoughts do all these sincere
efforts give utterance! An hour's conversation with these men would have
done more. I am astonished to find how meagre that diet is which has fed
so many men. The music of sound, which is all-sufficient at first, is
speedily lost, and then the fame of the poet must rest on the music of
the sense. A great philosophical and moral poet would give permanence
to the language by making the best sound convey the best sense.

_[Dec.] 14. Tuesday._ To hear the sunset described by the old Scotch
poet Douglas, as I have seen it, repays me for many weary pages of
antiquated Scotch. Nothing so restores and humanizes antiquity and makes
it blithe as the discovery of some natural sympathy between it and the
present. Why is it that there is something melancholy in antiquity? We
forget that it had any other future than our present. As if it were not
as near to _the_ future as ourselves! No, thank heavens, these ranks of
men to right and left, posterity and ancestry, are not to be thridded by
any earnest mortal. The heavens stood over the heads of our ancestors as
near as to us. Any living word in their books abolishes the difference
of time. It need only be considered from the present standpoint.

_[Dec.] 15. Wednesday._ A mild summer sun shines over forest and lake.
The earth looks as fair this morning as the Valhalla of the gods.
Indeed our spirits never go beyond nature. In the woods there is an
inexpressible happiness. Their mirth is but just repressed. In winter,
when there is but one green leaf for many rods, what warm content is in
them! They are not rude, but tender, even in the severest cold. Their
nakedness is their defense. All their sounds and sights are elixir to my
spirit. They possess a divine health. God is not more well. Every sound
is inspiriting and fraught with the same mysterious assurance, from the
creaking of the boughs in January to the soft sough of the wind in July.

How much of my well-being, think you, depends on the condition of my
lungs and stomach,—such cheap pieces of Nature as they, which, indeed,
she is every day reproducing with prodigality. Is the arrow indeed fatal
which rankles in the breast of the bird on the bough, in whose eye all
this fair landscape is reflected, and whose voice still echoes through
the wood?

The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by. This
old, familiar river is renewed each instant; only the channel is the
same.[300] The water which so calmly reflects the fleeting clouds and
the primeval trees I have never seen before. It may have washed some
distant shore, or framed a glacier or iceberg at the north, when I last
stood here. Seen through a mild atmosphere, the works of the husbandman,
his plowing and reaping, have a beauty to the beholder which the laborer
never sees.[301]

I seem to see somewhat more of my own kith and kin in the lichens on
the rocks than in any books. It does seem as if mine were a peculiarly
wild nature, which so yearns toward all wildness. I know of no redeeming
qualities in me but a sincere love for some things, and when I am
reproved I have to fall back on to this ground.[302] This is my argument
in reserve for all cases. My love is invulnerable. Meet me on that
ground, and you will find me strong. When I am condemned, and condemn
myself utterly, I think straightway, "But I rely on my love for some
things." Therein I am whole and entire. Therein I am God-propped.

When I see the smoke curling up through the woods from some farmhouse
invisible, it is more suggestive of the poetry of rural and domestic
life than a nearer inspection can be. Up goes the smoke as quietly as
the dew exhales in vapor from these pine leaves and oaks; as busy,
disposing itself in circles and in wreaths, as the housewife on the
hearth below. It is cotemporary with a piece of human biography, and
waves as a feather in some _man's_ cap. Under that rod of sky there is
some plot a-brewing, some ingenuity has planted itself, and we shall see
what it will do. It tattles of more things than the boiling of the pot.
It is but one of man's breaths. All that is interesting in history or
fiction is transpiring beneath that cloud. The subject of all life and
death, of happiness and grief, goes thereunder.

[Illustration: _Winter Landscape from Fair Haven Hill_]

When the traveller in the forest, attaining to some eminence, descries a
column of smoke in the distance, it is a very gentle hint to him of the
presence of man. It seems as if it would establish friendly relations
between them without more ado.[303]

_[Dec.] 18. Saturday._ Some men make their due impression upon their
generation, because a petty occasion is enough to call forth all their
energies; but are there not others who would rise to much higher levels,
whom the world has never provoked to make the effort? I believe there
are men now living who have never opened their mouths in a public
assembly, in whom nevertheless there is such a well of eloquence that
the appetite of any age could never exhaust it; who pine for an occasion
worthy of them, and will pine till they are dead; who can admire, as
well as the rest, at the flowing speech of the orator, but do yet miss
the thunder and lightning and visible sympathy of the elements which
would garnish their own utterance.

If in any strait I see a man fluttered and his ballast gone, then I
lose all hope of him, he is undone; but if he reposes still, though he
do nothing else worthy of him, if he is still a man in reserve, then is
there everything to hope of him. The age may well go pine itself that it
cannot put to use this gift of the gods. He lives on, still unconcerned,
not needing to be used. The greatest occasion will be the slowest to
come.

* * * * *

Sometimes a particular body of men do unconsciously assert that their
will is fate, that the right is decided by their fiat without appeal,
and when this is the case they can never be mistaken; as when one man is
quite silenced by the thrilling eloquence of another, and submits to be
neglected as to his fate, because such is not the willful vote of the
assembly, but their instinctive decision.

_Dec. 23. Thursday._ Concord.—The best man's spirit makes a fearful
sprite to haunt his tomb. The ghost of a priest is no better than that
of a highwayman. It is pleasant to hear of one who has blest whole
regions after his death by having frequented them while alive, who has
prophaned or tabooed no place by being buried in it.[304] It adds not
a little to the fame of Little John that his grave was long "celebrous
for the yielding of excellent whetstones."[305]

A forest is in all mythologies a sacred place, as the oaks among the
Druids and the grove of Egeria; and even in more familiar and common
life a celebrated wood is spoken of with respect, as "Barnsdale Wood"
and "Sherwood." Had Robin Hood no Sherwood to resort [to], it would
be difficult to invest his story with the charms it has got. It is
always the tale that is untold, the deeds done and the life lived in
the unexplored secrecy of the wood, that charm us and make us children
again,—to read his ballads, and hear of the greenwood tree.

_Dec. 24. Friday._ I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I
shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will be success
if I shall have left myself behind. But my friends ask what I will do
when I get there. Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress
of the seasons?[306]

_Dec. 25. Saturday._ It does seem as if Nature did for a long time
gently overlook the prophanity of man. The wood still kindly echoes
the strokes of the axe, and when the strokes are few and seldom, they
add a new charm to a walk. All the elements strive to _naturalize_ the
sound.[307]

Such is our sympathy with the seasons that we experience the same degree
of heat in the winter as in the summer.

It is not a true apology for any coarseness to say that it is natural.
The grim woods can afford to be very delicate and perfect in the
details.

I don't want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That
philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I
begin to live.

_Dec. 26. Sunday._ He is the rich man and enjoys the fruits of riches,
who, summer and winter forever, can find delight in the contemplation
of his soul. I could look as unweariedly up to that cope as into the
heavens of a summer day or a winter night. When I hear this bell ring,
I am carried back to years and Sabbaths when I was newer and more
innocent, I fear, than now, and it seems to me as if there were a world
within a world. Sin, I am sure, is not in overt acts or, indeed, in acts
of any kind, but is in proportion to the time which has come behind us
and displaced eternity,—that degree to which our elements are mixed with
the elements of the world. The whole duty of life is contained in the
question how to respire and aspire both at once.

_Dec. 29. Wednesday._ One does not soon learn the trade of life. That
one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than
any other work. There is need of the nice fingers of the girl as well
as the tough hand of the farmer. The daily work is too often toughening
the pericarp of the heart as well as the hand. Great familiarity with
the world must be nicely managed, lest it win away and bereave us of
some susceptibility. Experience bereaves us of our innocence; wisdom
bereaves us of our ignorance. Let us walk in the world without learning
its ways. Whole weeks or months of my summer life slide away in thin
volumes like mist or smoke, till at length some warm morning, perchance,
I see a sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, its shadow
flitting across the fields, which have caught a new significance from
that accident; and as that vapor is raised above the earth, so shall
the next weeks be elevated above the plane of the actual;[308] or when
the setting sun slants across the pastures, and the cows low to my
inward ear and only enhance the stillness, and the eve is as the dawn,
a beginning hour and not a final one, as if it would never have done,
with its clear western amber inciting men to lives of as limpid purity.
Then do other parts of my day's work shine than I had thought at noon,
for I discover the real purport of my toil, as, when the husbandman has
reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can best tell where
the pressed earth shines most.[309]

* * * * *

All true greatness runs as level a course, and is as unaspiring, as
the plow in the furrow. It wears the homeliest dress and speaks the
homeliest language. Its theme is gossamer and dew lines, johnswort
and loosestrife, for it has never stirred from its repose and is most
ignorant of foreign parts. Heaven is the inmost place. The good have
not to travel far. What cheer may we not derive from the thought that
our courses do not diverge, and we wend not asunder, but as the web of
destiny is woven it [is] fulled, and we are cast more and more into the
centre! And our fates even are social.[310] There is no wisdom which can
take [the] place of humanity, and I find that in old Chaucer that love
rings longest which rhymes best with some saw of Milton's or Edmunds's.
I wish I could be as still as God is. I can recall to my mind the
stillest summer hour, in which the grasshopper sings over the mulleins,
and there is a valor in that time the memory of which is armor that can
laugh at any blow of fortune. A man should go out [of] nature with the
chirp of the cricket or the trill of the veery ringing in his ear. These
earthly sounds should only die away for a season, as the strains of the
harp rise and swell. Death is that expressive pause in the music of the
blast.[311] I would be as clean as ye, O woods. I shall not rest till
I be as innocent as you. I know that I shall sooner or later attain to
an unspotted innocence, for when I consider that state even now I am
thrilled.

If we were wise enough, we should see to what virtue we were indebted
for any happier moment we might have, nor doubt we had earned this at
some time.

These motions everywhere in nature must surely [be] the circulations of
God. The flowing sail, the running stream, the waving tree, the roving
wind,—whence else their infinite health and freedom?[312] I can see
nothing so proper and holy as unrelaxed play and frolic in this bower
God has built for us. The suspicion of sin never comes to this thought.
Oh, if men felt this they would never build temples even of marble
or diamond, but it would be sacrilege and prophane, but disport them
forever in this paradise.

In the coldest day it melts somewhere.

It seems as if only one trait, one little incident in human biography,
need to be said or written in some era, that all readers may go mad
after it, and the man who did the miracle is made a demigod henceforth.
What we all do, not one can tell; and when some lucky speaker utters a
truth of our experience and not of our speculation, we think he must
have had the nine Muses and the three Graces to help him. I can at
length stretch me when I come to Chaucer's breadth; and I think, "Well,
I could be _that_ man's acquaintance,"[313] for he walked in that low
and retired way that I do, and was not too good to live. I am grieved
when they hint of any unmanly submissions he may have made, for that
subtracts from his breadth and humanity.

_Dec. 30. Thursday._ I admire Chaucer for a sturdy English wit. The easy
height he speaks from in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is as good
as anything in it,—as if he were indeed better than any of the company
there assembled.[314]

The poet does not have to go out of himself and cease to tattle of his
domestic affairs, to win our confidence, but is so broad that we see no
limits to his sympathy.

Great delicacy and gentleness of character is constantly displayed in
Chaucer's verse. The simplest and humblest words come readily to his
lips. The natural innocence of the man appears in the simple and pure
spirit in which "The Prioresses Tale" is conceived, in which the child
sings _O alma redemptoris mater_, and in the account of the departure of
Custance with her child upon the sea, in "The Man of Lawes Tale."[315]
The whole story of Chanticleer and Dame Partlet in "The Nonnes Preestes
Tale" is genuine humanity. I know nothing better in its kind. The poets
seem to be only more frank and plain-spoken than other men. Their verse
is but confessions. They always confide in the reader, and speak privily
with him, keeping nothing back.[316]

I know of no safe rule by which to judge of the purity of a former age
but that I see that the impure of the present age are not apt to rise
to noble sentiments when they speak or write, and suspect, therefore,
that there may be more truth than is allowed in the apology that such
was the manner of the age.[317]

Within the circuit of this plodding life,
There are moments of an azure hue
And as unspotted fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some south woodside; which make untrue
The best philosophy which has so poor an aim
But to console man for his grievance here.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
How in the summer past some
Unrecorded beam slanted across
Some upland pasture where the Johnswort grew,
Or heard, amidst the verdure of my mind, the bee's
long-smothered hum,
So by the cheap economy of God made rich to go upon
my wintry work again.
In the still, cheerful cold of winter nights,
When, in the cold light of the moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout
The icy spears are doubling their length
Against the glancing arrows of the sun,
And the shrunk wheels creak along the way,
Some summer accident long past
Of lakelet gleaming in the July beams,
Or hum of bee under the blue flag,
Loitering in the meads, or busy rill
which now stands dumb and still,
its own memorial, purling at its play along the slopes,
and through the meadows next, till that its sound was
quenched in the staid current of its parent stream.

In memory is the more reality. I have seen how the furrows shone but
late upturned, and where the fieldfare followed in the rear, when all
the fields stood bound and hoar beneath a thick integument of snow.[318]

* * * * *

When the snow is falling thick and fast, the flakes nearest you seem
to be driving straight to the ground, while the more distant seem to
float in the air in a quivering bank, like feathers, or like birds at
play, and not as if sent on any errand. So, at a little distance, all
the works of Nature proceed with sport and frolic. They are more in the
eye and less in the deed.

_Dec. 31. Friday._ Books of natural history make the most cheerful
winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when
the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys,
and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree,
and the migrations of the rice-bird; or of the breaking up of winter
in Labrador. I seem to hear the melting of the snow on the forks of
the Missouri as I read. I imbibe some portion of health from these
reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

There is a singular health for me in those words Labrador and East
Main which no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than federal
are these States! If there were no other vicissitudes but the seasons,
with their attendant and consequent changes, our interest would never
flag. Much more is a-doing than Congress wots of in the winter season.
What journal do the persimmon and buckeye keep, or the sharp-shinned
hawk? What is transpiring from summer to winter in the Carolinas,
and the Great Pine Forest, and the Valley of the Mohawk? The merely
political aspect of the land is never very cheering. Men are degraded
when considered as the members of a political organization. As a nation
the people never utter one great and healthy word. From this side all
nations present only the symptoms of disease. I see but Bunker's Hill
and Sing Sing, the District of Columbia and Sullivan's Island, with a
few avenues connecting them. But paltry are all these beside one blast
of the east or south wind which blows over them all.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. You must converse
much with the field and woods, if you would imbibe such health into your
mind and spirit as you covet for your body. Society is always diseased,
and the best is the sickest. There is no scent in it so wholesome as
that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as
that of everlasting in high pastures. Without that our feet at least
stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid.

I should like to keep some book of natural history always by me as
a sort of elixir, the reading of which would restore the tone of my
system and secure me true and cheerful views of life. For to the sick,
nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health. To the soul that
contemplates some trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment
can come. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political servitude,
no priestcraft nor tyranny, was ever [_sic_] taught by such as drank in
the harmony of nature.[319]

1842

(ÆT. 24-25)

_Jan. 1._ Virtue is the deed of the bravest. It is that art which
demands the greatest confidence and fearlessness. Only some hardy
soul ventures upon it. Virtue is a bravery so hardy that it deals in
what it has no experience in. The virtuous soul possesses a fortitude
and hardihood which not the grenadier nor pioneer can match. It never
shrunk. It goes singing to its work. Effort is its relaxation. The rude
pioneer work of this world has been done by the most devoted worshippers
of beauty.[320] Their resolution has possessed a keener edge than the
soldier's. In winter is their campaign; they never go into quarters.
They are elastic under the heaviest burden, under the extremest physical
suffering.

Methinks good courage will not flag here on the Atlantic border as long
as we are outflanked by the _Fur Countries_. There is enough in that
sound to cheer one under any circumstances. The spruce, the hemlock,
and the pine will not countenance despair. Methinks some creeds in
vestries and churches do forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the
Great Slave Lake, or how the Esquimaux sledges are drawn by dogs, and
in the twilight of the northern night the hunter does not give over
to follow the seal and walrus over the ice. These men are sick and
of diseased imaginations who would toll the world's knell so soon.
Cannot these sedentary sects do better than prepare the shrouds and
write the epitaphs of those other busy living men? The practical faith
of men belies the preacher's consolation. This is the creed of the
hypochondriac.[321]

There is no infidelity so great as that which prays, and keeps the
Sabbath, and founds churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches
a truer doctrine. The church is the hospital for men's souls, but the
reflection that he may one day occupy a ward in it should not discourage
the cheerful labors of the able-bodied man. Let him remember the sick
in their extremities, but not look thither as to his goal.[322]

_Jan. 2. Sunday._ The ringing of the church bell is a much more
melodious sound than any that is heard within the church. All great
values are thus public, and undulate like sound through the atmosphere.
Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches
are only the means of sociality. I will depend on the extravagance
of my neighbors for my luxuries, for they will take care to pamper
me if I will be overfed. The poor man who sacrificed nothing for the
gratification seems to derive a safer and more natural enjoyment from
his neighbor's extravagance than he does himself. It is a new natural
product, from the contemplation of which he derives new vigor and solace
as from a natural phenomenon.

In moments of quiet and leisure my thoughts are more apt to revert to
some natural than any human relation.

Chaucer's sincere sorrow in his latter days for the grossness of
his earlier works, and that he "cannot recall and annul" what he had
"written of the base and filthy love of men towards women; but alas they
are now continued from man to man," says he, "and I cannot do what I
desire," is all very creditable to his character.

Chaucer is the make-weight of his century,—a worthy representative
of England while Petrarch and Boccaccio lived in Italy, and Tell and
Tamerlane in Switzerland and Asia, and Bruce and Rienzi in Europe, and
Wickliffe and Gower in his own land. Edward III and John of Gaunt and
the Black Prince complete the company. The fame of Roger Bacon came
down from the preceding century, and Dante, though just departed, still
exerted the influence of a living presence.[323]

With all his grossness he is not undistinguished for the tenderness
and delicacy of his muse. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness is
peculiar to him which not even Wordsworth can match.[324] And then his
best passages of length are marked by a happy and healthy wit which is
rather rare in the poetry of any nation. On the whole, he impresses
me as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and
Shakespeare, for he would have held up his head in their company. Among
the earliest English poets he is their landlord and host, and has the
authority of such. We read him with affection and without criticism,
for he pleads no cause, but speaks for us, his readers, always. He has
that greatness of trust and reliance which compels popularity. He is
for a whole country and country [_sic_] to know and to be proud of.
The affectionate mention which succeeding early poets make of him,
coupling him with Homer and Virgil, is also to be taken into the account
in estimating his character. King James and Dunbar of Scotland speak
with more love and reverence of him than any cotemporary poet of his
predecessors of the last century. That childlike relation, indeed, does
not seem to exist now which was then.[325]

_Jan. 3. Monday._ It is pleasant when one can relieve the grossness of
the kitchen and the table by the simple beauty of his repast, so that
there may be anything in it to attract the eye of the artist even. I
have been popping corn to-night, which is only a more rapid blossoming
of the seed under a greater than July heat. The popped corn is a perfect
winter flower, hinting of anemones and houstonias. For this little grace
man has, mixed in with the vulgarness of his repast, he may well thank
his stars. The law by which flowers unfold their petals seems only to
have operated more suddenly under the intense heat. It looks like a
sympathy in this seed of the corn with its sisters of the vegetable
kingdom, as if by preference it assumed the flower form rather than the
crystalline. Here has bloomed for my repast such a delicate blossom as
will soon spring by the wall-sides. And this is as it should be. Why
should not Nature revel sometimes, and genially relax and make herself
familiar at my board? I would have my house a bower fit to entertain
her. It is a feast of such innocence as might have snowed down. By my
warm hearth sprang these cerealious blossoms; here was the bank where
they grew.

Methinks some such visible token of approval would always accompany the
simple and healthy repast. There would be such a smiling and blessing
upon it. Our appetite should always be so related to our taste, and the
board we spread for its gratification be an epitome of the universal
table which Nature sets by hill and wood and stream for her dumb
pensioners.[326]

_Jan. 5. Wednesday._ I find that whatever hindrances may occur I write
just about the same amount of truth in my Journal; for the record
is more concentrated, and usually it is some very real and earnest
life, after all, that interrupts. All flourishes are omitted. If I saw
wood from morning to night, though I grieve that I could not observe
the train of my thoughts during that time, yet, in the evening, the
few scrannel lines which describe my day's occupations will make the
creaking of the saw more musical than my freest fancies could have been.
I find incessant labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention
also, the best method to remove palaver out of one's style. One will
not dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before the night
falls in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded,
and ring soberly through the wood; and so will his lines ring and tell
on the ear, when at evening he settles the accounts of the day. I have
often been astonished at the force and precision of style to which
busy laboring men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when they
are required to make the effort. It seems as if their sincerity and
plainness were the main thing to be taught in schools,—and yet not in
the schools, but in the fields, in actual service, I should say. The
scholar not unfrequently envies the propriety and emphasis with which
the farmer calls to his team, and confesses that if that lingo were
written it would surpass his labored sentences.

Who is not tired of the weak and flowing periods of the politician
and scholar, and resorts not even to the Farmer's Almanac, to read the
simple account of the month's labor, to restore his tone again? I want
to see a sentence run clear through to the end, as deep and fertile
as a well-drawn furrow which shows that the plow was pressed down to
the beam. If our scholars would lead more earnest lives, we should not
witness those lame conclusions to their ill-sown discourses, but their
sentences would pass over the ground like loaded rollers, and not mere
hollow and wooden ones, to press in the seed and make it germinate.

A well-built sentence, in the rapidity and force with which it works,
may be compared to a modern corn-planter, which furrows out, drops the
seed, and covers it up at one movement.[327]

The scholar requires hard labor as an impetus to his pen. He will learn
to grasp it as firmly and wield it as gracefully and effectually as an
axe or a sword. When I consider the labored periods of some gentleman
scholar, who perchance in feet and inches comes up to the standard of
his race, and is nowise deficient in girth, I am amazed at the immense
sacrifice of thews and sinews. What! these proportions and these bones,
and this their work! How these hands hewed this fragile matter, mere
filagree or embroidery fit for ladies' fingers! Can this be a stalwart
man's work, who has marrow in his backbone and a tendon Achilles in his
heel? They who set up Stonehenge did somewhat,—much in comparison,—if
it were only their strength was once fairly laid out, and they stretched
themselves.[328]

I discover in Raleigh's verses the vices of the courtier. They are
not equally sustained, as if his noble genius were warped by the
frivolous society of the court. He was capable of rising to a remarkable
elevation. His poetry has for the most part a heroic tone and vigor
as of a knight errant. But again there seems to have been somewhat
unkindly in his education, and as if he had by no means grown up to be
the man he promised. He was apparently too genial and loyal a soul, or
rather he was incapable of resisting temptations from that quarter. If
to his genius and culture he could have added the temperament of Fox or
Cromwell, the world would have had cause longer to remember him. He was
the pattern of nobility. One would have said it was by some lucky fate
that he and Shakespeare flourished at the same time in England, and yet
what do we know of their acquaintanceship?

_Jan. 7. Friday._ I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear tell
of service-berries, pokeweed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these
cheap summer glories?[329]

The great God is very calm withal. How superfluous is any excitement
in his creatures! He listens equally to the prayers of the believer
and the unbeliever. The moods of man should unfold and alternate as
gradually and placidly as those of nature. The sun shines for aye! The
sudden revolutions of these times and this generation have acquired a
very exaggerated importance. They do not interest me much, for they are
not in harmony with the longer periods of nature. The present, in any
aspect in which it can be presented to the smallest audience, is always
mean. God does not sympathize with the popular movements.

_Jan. 8. Saturday._ When, as now, in January a south wind melts
the snow, and the bare ground appears, covered with sere grass and
occasionally wilted green leaves which seem in doubt whether to let go
their greenness quite or absorb new juices against the coming year,—in
such a season a perfume seems to exhale from the earth itself and the
south wind melts my integuments also. Then is she my mother earth. I
derive a real vigor from the scent of the gale wafted over the naked
ground, as from strong meats, and realize again how man is the pensioner
of Nature. We are always conciliated and cheered when we are fed by
[such] an influence, and our needs are felt to be part of the domestic
economy of Nature.

* * * * *

What offends me most in my compositions is the moral element in them.
The repentant say never a brave word. Their resolves should be mumbled
in silence. Strictly speaking, morality is not healthy. Those undeserved
joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they
that sing.

* * * * *

One music seems to differ from another chiefly in its more perfect time,
to use this word in a true sense. In the steadiness and equanimity of
music lies its divinity. It is the only assured tone.[330] When men
attain to speak with as settled a faith and as firm assurance, their
voices will sing and their feet march as do the feet of the soldier.
The very dogs howl if time is disregarded. Because of the perfect
time of this music-box—its harmony with itself—is its greater dignity
and stateliness. This music is more nobly related for its more exact
measure. So simple a difference as this more even pace raises it to the
higher dignity.

Man's progress through nature should have an accompaniment of music. It
relieves the scenery, which is seen through it as a subtler element,
like a very clear morning air in autumn. Music wafts me through the
clear, sultry valleys, with only a slight gray vapor against the hills.

Of what manner of stuff is the web of time wove, when these consecutive
sounds called a strain of music can be wafted down through the centuries
from Homer to me, and Homer have been conversant with that same
unfathomable mystery and charm which so newly tingles my ears?[331]
These single strains, these melodious cadences which plainly proceed
out of a very deep meaning and a sustained soul, are the interjections
of God. They are perhaps the expression of the perfect knowledge which
the righteous at length attain to. Am I so like thee, my brother, that
the cadence of two notes affects us alike? Shall I not some time have
an opportunity to thank him who made music? I feel a sad cheer when I
hear these lofty strains,[332] because there must be something in me as
lofty that hears. But ah, I hear them but rarely! Does it not rather
hear me? If my blood were clogged in my veins, I am sure it would run
more freely. God must be very rich, who, for the turning of a pivot,
can pour out such melody on me. It is a little prophet; it tells me
the secrets of futurity. Where are its secrets wound up but in this
box?[333] So much hope had slumbered. There are in music such strains
as far surpass any faith in the loftiness of man's destiny.[334] He must
be very sad before he can comprehend them. The clear, liquid notes from
the morning fields beyond seem to come through a vale of sadness to man,
which gives all music a plaintive air. It hath caught a higher pace than
any virtue I know. It is the arch-reformer. It hastens the sun to his
setting. It invites him to his rising. It is the sweetest reproach, a
measured satire. I know there is a people somewhere [where] this heroism
has place. Or else things are to be learned which it will be sweet
to learn.[335] This cannot be all rumor. When I hear this, I think of
that everlasting and stable something which is not sound, but to be a
thrilling reality, and can consent to go about the meanest work for as
many years of time as it pleases even the Hindoo penance, for a year
of the gods were as nothing to that which shall come after. What, then,
can I do to hasten that other time, or that space where there shall be
no time, and these things be a more living part of my life,—where there
will be no discords in my life?

_Jan. 9. Sunday._ One cannot too soon forget his errors and
misdemeanors; for [to] dwell long upon them is to add to the offense,
and repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by somewhat better,
and which is as free and original as if they had not been. Not to
grieve long for any action, but to go immediately and do freshly and
otherwise, subtracts so much from the wrong. Else we may make the delay
of repentance the punishment of the sin. But a great nature will not
consider its sins as its own, but be more absorbed in the prospect of
that valor and virtue for the future which is more properly it, than in
those improper actions which, by being sins, discover themselves to be
not it.

* * * * *

Sir W. Raleigh's faults are those of a courtier and a soldier. In his
counsels and aphorisms we see not unfrequently the haste and rashness
of a boy. His philosophy was not wide nor deep, but continually giving
way to the generosity of his nature. What he touches he adorns by his
greater humanity and native nobleness, but he touches not the true nor
original. He thus embellishes the old, but does not unfold the new. He
seems to have been fitted by his genius for short flights of impulsive
poetry, but not for the sustained loftiness of Shakespeare or Milton.
He was not wise nor a seer in any sense, but rather one of nature's
nobility; the most generous nature which can be spared to linger in the
purlieus of the court.

His was a singularly perverted genius, with such an inclination to
originality and freedom, and yet who never steered his own course. Of
so fair and susceptible a nature, rather than broad or deep, that he
delayed to slake his thirst at the nearest and even more turbid wells
of truth and beauty. Whose homage to the least fair or noble left no
space for homage to the all fair. The misfortune of his circumstances,
or rather of the man, appears in the fact that he was the author of
"Maxims of State" and "The Cabinet Council" and "The Soul's Errand."

_Feb. 19. Saturday._ I never yet saw two men sufficiently great to meet
as two. In proportion as they are great the differences are fatal,
because they are felt not to be partial but total. Frankness to him
who is unlike me will lead to the utter denial of him. I begin to see
how that the preparation for all issues is to do virtuously. When two
approach to meet, they incur no petty dangers, but they run terrible
risks. Between the sincere there will be no civilities. No greatness
seems prepared for the little decorum, even savage unmannerliness, it
meets from equal greatness.

_Feb. 20. Sunday._ "Examine animal forms geometrically, from man, who
represents the perpendicular, to the reptile which forms the horizontal
line, and then applying to those forms the rules of the exact sciences,
which God himself cannot change, we shall see that visible nature
contains them all; that the combinations of the seven primitive forms
are entirely exhausted, and that, therefore, they can represent all
possible varieties of morality."—From "The True Messiah; or the Old and
New Testaments, examined according to the Principles of the Language of
Nature. By G. Segger," translated from French by Grater.

* * * * *

I am amused to see from my window here how busily man has divided and
staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither
and thither everywhere over the land.

* * * * *

My path hitherto has been like a road through a diversified country,
now climbing high mountains, then descending into the lowest vales.
From the summits I saw the heavens; from the vales I looked up to the
heights again. In prosperity I remember God, or memory is one with
consciousness; in adversity I remember my own elevations, and only hope
to see God again.

It is vain to talk. What do you want? To bandy words, or deliver some
grains of truth which stir within you? Will you make a pleasant rumbling
sound after feasting, for digestion's sake, or such music as the birds
in springtime?

* * * * *

The death of friends should inspire us as much as their lives. If they
are great and rich enough, they will leave consolation to the mourners
before the expenses of their funerals.[336] It will not be hard to part
with any worth, because it is worthy. How can any good depart? It does
not go and come, but we. Shall we wait for it? Is it slower than we?

_Feb. 21._ I must confess there is nothing so strange to me as my own
body. I love any other piece of nature, almost, better.

I was always conscious of sounds in nature which my ears could never
hear,—that I caught but the prelude to a strain. She always retreats as
I advance. Away behind and behind is she and her meaning. Will not this
faith and expectation make to itself ears at length? I never saw to the
end, nor heard to the end; but the best part was unseen and unheard.

I am like a feather floating in the atmosphere; on every side is depth
unfathomable.

I feel as if years had been crowded into the last month,[337] and yet
the regularity of what we call time has been so far preserved as that
I[338] ... will be welcome in the present. I have lived ill for the
most part because too near myself. I have tripped myself up, so that
there was no progress for my own narrowness. I cannot walk conveniently
and pleasantly but when I hold myself far off in the horizon. And the
soul dilutes the body and makes it passable. My soul and body have
tottered along together of late, tripping and hindering one another like
unpracticed Siamese twins. They two should walk as one, that no obstacle
may be nearer than the firmament.

* * * * *

There must be some narrowness in the soul that compels one to have
secrets.

_Feb. 23. Wednesday._ Every poet's muse is circumscribed in her
wanderings, and may be well said to haunt some favorite spring or
mountain. Chaucer seems to have been the poet of gardens. He has hardly
left a poem in which some retired and luxurious retreat of the kind is
not described, to which he gains access by some secret port, and there,
by some fount or grove, is found his hero and the scene of his tale. It
seems as if, by letting his imagination riot in the matchless beauty
of an ideal garden, he thus fed [_sic_] his fancy on to the invention
of a tale which would fit the scene. The muse of the most universal
poet retires into some familiar nook, whence it spies out the land as
the eagle from his eyrie, for he who sees so far over plain and forest
is perched in a narrow cleft of the crag. Such pure childlike love of
Nature is nowhere to be matched.[339] And it is not strange that the
poetry of so rude an age should contain such polished praise of Nature;
for the charms of Nature are not enhanced by civilization, as society
is, but she possesses a permanent refinement, which at last subdues and
educates men.

The reader has great confidence in Chaucer. He tells no lies. You read
his story with a smile, as if it were the circumlocution of a child,
and yet you find that he has spoke with more directness and economy of
words than a sage. He is never heartless. So new was all his theme in
those days, that [he] had not to invent, but only to tell.[340]

The language of poetry is _infantile_. It cannot talk.

* * * * *

It is the charm and greatness of all society, from friendship to the
drawing-room, that it takes place on a level slightly higher than the
actual characters of the parties would warrant;[341] it is an expression
of faith. True politeness is only hope and trust in men. It never
addresses a fallen or falling man, but salutes a rising generation. It
does not flatter, but only congratulates. The rays of light come to us
in such a curve that every fellow in the street appears higher than he
really is. It is the innate civility of nature.[342]

* * * * *

I am glad that it was so because it could be.

_March 1._ Whatever I learn from any circumstances, that especially I
needed to know. Events come out of God, and our characters determine
them and constrain fate, as much as they determine the words and tone
of a friend to us. Hence are they always acceptable as experience, and
we do not see how we could have done without them.

_March 2._ The greatest impression of character is made by that
person who consents to have no character. He who sympathizes with and
runs through the whole circle of attributes cannot afford to be an
individual. Most men stand pledged to themselves, so that their narrow
and confined virtue has no suppleness. They are like children who cannot
walk in bad company and learn the lesson which even it teaches, without
their guardians, for fear of contamination. He is a fortunate man who
gets through the world without being burthened by a name and reputation,
for they are at any rate but his past history and no prophecy, and as
such concern him no more than another. Character is Genius settled. It
can maintain itself against the world, and if it relapses it repents.
It is as a dog set to watch the property of Genius. Genius, strictly
speaking, is not responsible, for it is not moral.

_March 8._ I live in the perpetual verdure of the globe. I die in the
annual decay of nature.

We can understand the phenomenon of death in the animal better if we
first consider it in the order next below us, the vegetable.

The death of the flea and the elephant are but phenomena of the life of
nature.

* * * * *

Most lecturers preface their discourses on music with a history of
music, but as well introduce an essay on virtue with a history of
virtue.[343] As if the possible combinations of sound, the last wind
that sighed, or melody that waked the wood, had any history other than
a perceptive ear might hear in the least and latest sound of nature!
A history of music would be like the history of the future; for so
little past is it, and capable of record, that it is but the hint of a
prophecy. It is the history of gravitation. It has no history more than
God. It circulates and resounds forever, and only flows like the sea
or air. There might be a history of men or of hearing, but not of the
unheard. Why, if I should sit down to write its story, the west wind
would rise to refute me. Properly speaking, there can be no history but
natural history, for there is no past in the soul but in nature. So that
the history of anything is only the true account of it, which will be
always the same. I might as well write the history of my aspirations.
Does not the last and highest contain them all? Do the lives of the
great composers contain the facts which interested them? What is this
music? Why, thinner and more evanescent than ether; subtler than sound,
for it is only a disposition of sound. It is to sound what color is to
matter. It is the color of a flame, or of the rainbow, or of water. Only
one sense has known it. The least profitable, the least tangible fact,
which cannot be bought or cultivated but by virtuous methods, and yet
our ears ring with it like shells left on the shore.

_March 11. Friday._ Chaucer's familiar, but innocent, way of speaking of
God is of a piece with his character. He comes readily to his thoughts
without any false reverence. If Nature is our mother, is not God much
more? God should come into our thoughts with no more parade than the
zephyr into our ears. Only strangers approach him with ceremony. How
rarely in our English tongue do we find expressed any affection for
God! No sentiment is so rare as love of God,—universal love. Herbert
is almost the only exception. "Ah, my dear God," etc. Chaucer's was a
remarkably affectionate genius. There is less love and simple trust in
Shakespeare. When he sees a beautiful person or object, he almost takes
a pride in the "maistry" of his God.[344] The Protestant Church seems to
have nothing to supply the place of the Saints of the Catholic calendar,
who were at least channels for the affections. Its God has perhaps too
many of the attributes of a Scandinavian deity.

* * * * *

We can only live healthily the life the gods assign us. I must receive
my life as passively as the willow leaf that flutters over the brook. I
must not be for myself, but God's work, and that is always good. I will
wait the breezes patiently, and grow as Nature shall determine. My fate
cannot but be grand so. We may live the life of a plant or an animal,
without living an animal life. This constant and universal content of
the animal comes of resting quietly in God's palm. I feel as if [I]
could at any time resign my life and the responsibility of living into
God's hands, and become as innocent, free from care, as a plant or
stone.

My life, my life! why will you linger? Are the years short and the
months of no account? How often has long delay quenched my aspirations!
Can God afford that I should forget him? Is he so indifferent to my
career? Can heaven be postponed with no more ado? Why were my ears given
to hear those everlasting strains which haunt my life, and yet to be
prophaned much more by these perpetual dull sounds?

* * * * *

Our doubts are so musical that they persuade themselves.

Why, God, did you include me in your great scheme? Will you not make me
a partner at last? Did it need there should be a conscious material?

* * * * *

My friend, my friend, I'd speak so frank to thee that thou wouldst pray
me to keep back some part, for fear I robbed myself. To address thee
delights me, there is such cleanness in the delivery. I am delivered of
my tale, which, told to strangers, still would linger on my lips as if
untold, or doubtful how it ran.

_March 12._ Consider what a difference there is between living and
dying. To die is not to _begin_ to die, and _continue_; it is not a
state of continuance, but of transientness; but to live is a condition
of continuance, and does not mean to be born merely. There is no
continuance of death. It is a transient phenomenon. Nature presents
nothing in a state of death.

_March 13. Sunday._ The sad memory of departed friends is soon incrusted
over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as their monuments are
overgrown with moss.[345] Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By
the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly
objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides to this
world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or
dissolution, in life or death. For seen with the eye of a poet, as God
sees them, all are alive and beautiful; but seen with the historical
eye, or the eye of the memory, they are dead and offensive. If we see
Nature as pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; but seen as
progressing, she is beautiful.

* * * * *

I am startled that God can make me so rich even with my own cheap
stores. It needs but a few wisps of straw in the sun, or some small word
dropped, or that has long lain silent in some book. When heaven begins
and the dead arise, no trumpet is blown; perhaps the south wind will
blow. What if you or I be dead! God is alive still.

_March 14._ Chaucer's genius does not soar like Milton's, but is
genial and familiar. It is only a greater portion of humanity, with
all its weakness. It is not heroic, as Raleigh, or pious, as Herbert,
or philosophical, as Shakespeare, but the child of the English nation,
but that child that is "father of the man." His genius is only for the
most part an exceeding naturalness. It is perfect sincerity, though with
the behavior of a child rather than of a man.[346] He can complain, as
in the "Testament of Love," but yet so truly and unfeignedly that his
complaint does not fail to interest. All England has his case at heart.

He shows great tenderness and delicacy, but not the heroic sentiment.
His genius was feminine, not masculine,—not but such is rarest to find
in woman (though the appreciation of it is not),—but less manly than
the manliest.[347]

* * * * *

It is not easy to find one brave enough to play the game of love quite
alone with you, but they must get some third person, or world, to
countenance them. They thrust others between. Love is so delicate and
fastidious that I see not how [it] can ever begin. Do you expect me to
love with you, unless you make my love secondary to nothing else? Your
words come tainted, if the thought of the world darted between thee and
the thought of me. You are not venturous enough for love. It goes alone
unscared through wildernesses.

As soon as I see people loving what they see merely, and not their own
high hopes that they form of others, I pity, and do not want their love.
Such love delays me. Did I ask thee to love me who hate myself? No! Love
that I love, and I will love thee that lovest it.

The love is faint-hearted and short-lived that is contented with the
past history of its object. It does not prepare the soil to bear new
crops lustier than the old.

"I would I had leisure for these things," sighs the world. "When I have
done my quilting and baking, then I will not be backward."

Love never stands still, nor does its object. It is the revolving sun
and the swelling bud. If I know what I love, it is because I _remember_
it.

Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would
the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not
equally so? What am I good for now, who am still marching after high
things, but to hear and tell the news, to bring wood and water, and
count how many eggs the hens lay? In the meanwhile, I expect my life
will begin. I will not aspire longer. I will see what it is I would be
after. I will be unanimous.

_March 15. Tuesday._ It is a new day; the sun shines. The poor have
come out to employ themselves in the sunshine, the old and feeble to
scent the air once more. I hear the bluebird and the song sparrow and
the robin, and the note of the lark leaks up through the meadows, as if
its bill had been thawed by the warm sun.

As I am going to the woods I think to take some small book in my pocket
whose author has been there already, whose pages will be as good as my
thoughts, and will eke them out or show me human life still gleaming in
the horizon when the woods have shut out the town. But I can find none.
None will sail as far forward into the bay of nature as my thought.
They stay at home. I would go home. When I get to the wood their thin
leaves rustle in my fingers. They are bare and obvious, and there is no
halo or haze about them. Nature lies far and fair behind them all.[348]
I should like to meet the great and serene sentence, which does not
reveal itself,—only that it is great,—which I may never with my utmost
intelligence pierce through and beyond (more than the earth itself),
which no intelligence can understand. There should be a kind of life
and palpitation to it; under its rind a kind of blood should circulate
forever, communicating freshness to its countenance.[349]

* * * * *

Cold Spring.—I hear nothing but a phœbe, and the wind, and the rattling
of a chaise in the wood. For a few years I stay here, not knowing,
taking my own life by degrees, and then I go. I hear a spring bubbling
near, where I drank out of a can in my earliest youth. The birds, the
squirrels, the alders, the pines, they seem serene and in their places.
I wonder if my life looks as serene to them too. Does no creature, then,
see with the eyes of its own narrow destiny, but with God's? When God
made man, he reserved some parts and some rights to himself. The eye has
many qualities which belong to God more than man. It is his lightning
which flashes in it. When I look into my companion's eye, I think it is
God's private mine. It is a noble feature; it cannot be degraded; for
God can look on all things undefiled.

* * * * *

Pond.—Nature is constantly original and inventing new patterns, like a
mechanic in his shop. When the overhanging pine drops into the water, by
the action of the sun, and the wind rubbing it on the shore, its boughs
are worn white and smooth and assume fantastic forms, as if turned by a
lathe.[350] All things, indeed, are subjected to a rotary motion, either
gradual and partial or rapid and complete, from the planet and system
to the simplest shellfish and pebbles on the beach; as if all beauty
resulted from an object turning on its own axis, or others turning
about it. It establishes a new centre in the universe. As all curves
have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character
has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or
waving of the body toward it.

* * * * *

The great and solitary heart will love alone, without the knowledge of
its object. It cannot have society in its love. It will expend its love
as the cloud drops rain upon the fields over which [it] floats.

The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly; only the lover's
words are heard. The intellect should never speak; it is not a natural
sound. How trivial the best actions are! I am led about from sunrise to
sunset by an ignoble routine, and yet can find no better road. I must
make a part of the planet. I must obey the law of nature.

_March 16. Wednesday._ Raleigh's Maxims are not true and impartial, but
yet are expressed with a certain magnanimity, which was natural to the
man, as if this selfish policy could easily afford to give place in him
to a more human and generous. He gives such advice that we have more
faith in his conduct than his principles.

He seems to have carried the courtier's life to the highest pitch of
magnanimity and grace it was capable of. He is liberal and generous
as a prince,—that is, within bounds; brave, chivalrous, heroic, as the
knight in armor and not as a defenseless man. His was not the heroism of
Luther, but of Bayard. There was more of grace than of truth in it. He
had more taste than character. There may be something petty in a refined
taste; it easily degenerates into effeminacy; it does not consider the
broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is
fastidious and curious, or nice only.

* * * * *

The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest
and soundest. He who uttered them had a right to speak. He did not stand
on a rolling stone, but was well assured of his footing, and naturally
breathed them without effort. They were spoken in the nick of time.
With rare fullness were they spoken, as a flower expands in the field;
and if you dispute their doctrine, you will say, "But there is truth
in their assurance." Raleigh's are of this nature, spoken with entire
satisfaction and heartiness. They are not philosophy, but poetry.

With him it was always well done and nobly said.

That is very true which Raleigh says about the equal necessity of
war and law,—that "the necessity of war, which among human actions
is most lawless, hath some kind of affinity and near resemblance with
the necessity of law;" for both equally rest on force as their basis,
and war is only the resource of law, either on a smaller or larger
scale,—its authority asserted. In war, in some sense, lies the very
genius of law. It is law creative and active; it is the first principle
of the law. What is human warfare but just this,—an effort to make the
laws of God and nature take sides with one party. Men make an arbitrary
code, and, because it is not right, they try to make it prevail by
might. The moral law does not want any champion. Its asserters do not
go to war. It was never infringed with impunity. It is inconsistent to
decry war and maintain law, for if there were no need of war there would
be no need of law.

* * * * *

I must confess I see no resource but to conclude that conscience was not
given us to no purpose, or for a hindrance, but that, however flattering
order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy; and
we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain
ourselves on this earth and in this life as we may, without signing our
death-warrant in the outset. What does the law protect? My rights? or
any rights? My right, or the right? If I avail myself of it, it may help
my sin; it cannot help my virtue. Let us see if we cannot stay here,
where God has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach
to the earth? While the law holds fast the thief and murderer for my
protection (I should say its own), it lets itself go loose. Expediencies
differ. They may clash. English law may go to war with American law,
that is English interest with American interest, but what is expedient
for the whole world will be absolute right, and synonymous with the law
of God. So the law is only partial right. It is selfish, and consults
for the interest of the few.[351]

Somehow, strangely, the vice of men gets well represented and protected,
but their virtue has none to plead its cause, nor any charter of
immunities and rights. The Magna Charta is not chartered rights, but
chartered wrongs.

_March 17. Thursday._ I have been making pencils all day, and then at
evening walked to see an old schoolmate who is going to help make the
Welland Canal navigable for ships round Niagara. He cannot see any
such motives and modes of living as I; professes not to look beyond
the securing of certain "creature comforts." And so we go silently
different ways, with all serenity, I in the still moonlight through the
village this fair evening to write these thoughts in my journal, and he,
forsooth, to mature his schemes to ends as good, maybe, but different.
So are we two made, while the same stars shine quietly over us. If I or
he be wrong, Nature yet consents placidly. She bites her lip and smiles
to see how her children will agree. So does the Welland Canal get built,
and other conveniences, while I live. Well and good, I must confess.
Fast sailing ships are hence not detained.

What means this changing sky, that now I freeze and contract and go
within myself to warm me, and now I say it is a south wind, and go all
soft and warm along the way? I sometimes wonder if I do not breathe the
south wind.

_March 18. Friday._ Whatever book or sentence will bear to be read
twice, we may be sure was thought twice. I say this thinking of Carlyle,
who writes pictures or first impressions merely, which consequently
will only bear a first reading. As if any transient, any _new_, mood of
the best man deserved to detain the world long. I should call Carlyle's
writing essentially dramatic, excellent acting, entertaining especially
to those who see rather than those who hear, not to be repeated more
than a joke. If he did not think who made the joke, how shall we think
who hear it? He never consults the oracle, but thinks to utter oracles
himself. There is nothing in his books for which he is not, and does
not feel, responsible. He does not retire behind the truth he utters,
but stands in the foreground. I wish he would just think, and tell
me what he thinks, appear to me in the attitude of a man with his ear
inclined, who comes as silently and meekly as the morning star, which
is unconscious of the dawn it heralds, leading the way up the steep as
though alone and unobserved in its observing, without looking behind.
He is essentially a humorist. But humors will not feed a man; they are
the least satisfactory morsel to the healthy appetite. They circulate;
I want rather to meet that about which they circulate. The heart is not
a humor, nor do they go to the heart, as the blood does.[352]

_March 19. Saturday_. When I walk in the fields of Concord and meditate
on the destiny of this prosperous slip of the Saxon family, the
unexhausted energies of this new country, I forget that this which is
now Concord was once Musketaquid, and that the _American race_ has had
its destiny also. Everywhere in the fields, in the corn and grain land,
the earth is strewn with the relics of a race which has vanished as
completely as if trodden in with the earth. I find it good to remember
the eternity behind me as well as the eternity before. Wherever I go, I
tread in the tracks of the Indian. I pick up the bolt which he has but
just dropped at my feet. And if I consider destiny I am on his trail. I
scatter his hearthstones with my feet, and pick out of the embers of his
fire the simple but enduring implements of the wigwam and the chase. In
planting my corn in the same furrow which yielded its increase to his
support so long, I displace some memorial of him.

I have been walking this afternoon over a pleasant field planted with
winter rye, near the house, where this strange people once had their
dwelling-place. Another species of mortal men, but little less wild to
me than the musquash they hunted. Strange spirits, dæmons, whose eyes
could never meet mine; with another nature and another fate than mine.
The crows flew over the edge of the woods, and, wheeling over my head,
seemed to rebuke, as dark-winged spirits more akin to the Indian than
I. Perhaps only the present disguise of the Indian. If the new has a
meaning, so has the old.[353]

Nature has her russet hues as well as green. Indeed, our eye splits
on every object, and we can as well take one path as the other. If I
consider its history, it is old; if its destiny, it is new. I may see
a part of an object, or the whole. I will not be imposed on and think
Nature is old because the season is advanced. I will study the botany of
the mosses and fungi on the decayed [wood], and remember that decayed
wood is not old, but has just begun to be what it is. I need not think
of the pine almond[354] or the acorn and sapling when I meet the fallen
pine or oak, more than of the generations of pines and oaks which have
fed the young tree. The new blade of the corn, the third leaf of the
melon, these are not green but gray with time, but sere in respect of
time.

The pines and the crows are not changed, but instead that Philip and
Paugus stand on the plain, here are Webster and Crockett. Instead of the
council-house is the legislature. What a new aspect have new eyes given
to the land! Where is this country but in the hearts of its inhabitants?
Why, there is only so much of Indian America left as there is of the
American Indian in the character of this generation.

* * * * *

A blithe west wind is blowing over all. In the fine flowing haze, men
at a distance seem shadowy and gigantic, as ill-defined and great as
men should always be. I do not know if yonder be a man or a ghost.

* * * * *

What a consolation are the stars to man!—so high and out of his reach,
as is his own destiny. I do not know but my life is fated to be thus low
and grovelling always. I cannot discover its use even to myself. But it
is permitted to see those stars in the sky equally useless, yet highest
of all and deserving of a fair destiny. My fate is in some sense linked
with that of the stars, and if they are to persevere to a great end,
shall I die who could conjecture it? It surely is some encouragement
to know that the stars are my fellow-creatures, for I do not suspect
but they are reserved for a high destiny. Has not he who discovers and
names a planet in the heavens as long a year as it? I do not fear that
any misadventure will befall _them_. Shall I not be content to disappear
with the missing stars? Do I mourn their fate?

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

* * * * *

I see laws which never fail, of whose failure I never conceived. Indeed
I cannot detect failure anywhere but in my fear. I do not fear that
right is not right, that good is not good, but only the annihilation of
the present existence. But only that can make me incapable of fear. My
fears are as good prophets as my hopes.

_March 20. Sunday_. My friend is cold and reserved because his love
for me is waxing and not waning. These are the early processes; the
particles are just beginning to shoot in crystals. If the mountains
came to me, I should no longer go to the mountains. So soon as that
consummation takes place which I wish, it will be past. Shall I not have
a friend in reserve? Heaven is to come. I hope this is not it.

Words should pass between friends as the lightning passes from cloud
to cloud. I don't know how much I assist in the economy of nature when
I declare a fact. Is it not an important part in the history of the
flower that I tell my friend where I found it? We do [not] wish friends
to feed and clothe our bodies,—neighbors are kind enough for that,—but
to do the like offices to ourselves.[355] We wish to spread and publish
ourselves, as the sun spreads its rays; and we toss the new thought
to the friend, and thus it is dispersed. Friends are those twain who
feel their interests to be one. Each knows that the other might as well
have said what he said. All beauty, all music, all delight springs from
apparent dualism but real unity. My friend is my real brother. I see his
nature groping yonder like my own. Does there go one whom I know? then
I go there.

The field where friends have met is consecrated forever. Man seeks
friendship out of the desire to realize a home here. As the Indian
thinks he receives into himself the courage and strength of his
conquered enemy, so we add to ourselves all the character and heart of
our friends. He is my creation. I can do what I will with him. There
is no possibility of being thwarted; the friend is like wax in the rays
that fall from our own hearts.

The friend does not take my word for anything, but he takes me. He
trusts me as I trust myself. We only need be as true to others as we
are to ourselves, that there may be ground enough for friendship. In
the beginnings of friendship,—for it does not grow,—we realize such love
and justice as are attributed to God.

Very few are they from whom we derive any _in_formation. The most only
announce and tell tales, but the friend _in_-forms.

What is all nature and human life at this moment, what the scenery and
vicinity of a human soul, but the song of an early sparrow from yonder
fences, and the cackling hens in the barn? So for one while my destiny
loiters within ear-shot of these sounds. The great busy Dame Nature is
concerned to know how many eggs her hens lay. The Soul, the proprietor
of the world, has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering
of cattle, and the draining of peat meadows. Away in Scythia, away in
India, they make butter and cheese for its larder.[356] I wish that in
some page of the Testament there were something like Charlemagne's egg
account. Was not Christ interested in the setting hens of Palestine?

Nature is very ample and roomy. She has left us plenty of space to
move in. As far as I can see from this window, how little life in the
landscape! The few birds that flit past do not crowd; they do not fill
the valley. The traveller on the highway has no fellow-traveller for
miles before or behind him. Nature was generous and not niggardly,
certainly.

* * * * *

How simple is the natural connection of events. We complain greatly of
the want of flow and sequence in books, but if the journalist only move
himself from Boston to New York, and speak as before, there is link
enough. And so there would be, if he were as careless of connection
and order when he stayed at home, and let the incessant progress which
his life makes be the apology for abruptness. Do I not travel as far
away from my old resorts, though I stay here at home, as though I were
on board the steamboat? Is not my life riveted together? Has not it
sequence? Do not my breathings follow each other naturally?

_March 21._[357] Who is old enough to have learned from experience?

_March 22. Tuesday._ Nothing can be more useful to a man than a
determination not to be hurried.

I have not succeeded if I have an antagonist who fails. It must be
humanity's success.

I cannot think nor utter my thought unless I have infinite room. The
cope of heaven is not too high, the sea is not too deep, for him who
would unfold a great thought. It must feed me and warm and clothe me.
It must be an entertainment to which my whole nature is invited. I must
know that the gods are to be my fellow-guests.

* * * * *

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

_March 23. Wednesday._ Plain speech is always a desideratum. Men write
in a florid style only because they would match the simple beauties of
the plainest speech. They prefer to be misunderstood, rather than come
short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praises the epistolary style of
Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta, because of "the difficulty
of understanding it: there was, he said, but one person at Jidda who was
capable of understanding and explaining the Pasha's correspondence."
A plain sentence, where every word is rooted in the soil, is indeed
flowery and verdurous. It has the beauty and variety of mosaic with the
strength and compactness of masonry. All fullness looks like exuberance.
We are not rich without superfluous wealth; but the imitator only copies
the superfluity. If the words were sufficiently simple and answering to
the thing to be expressed, our sentences would be as blooming as wreaths
of evergreen and flowers.[358] You cannot fill a wine-glass quite to
the brim without heaping it. Simplicity is exuberant.

When I look back eastward over the world, it seems to be all in repose.
Arabia, Persia, Hindostan are the land of contemplation. Those Eastern
nations have perfected the luxury of idleness. Mount Sabér, according
to the French traveller and naturalist Botta, is celebrated for
producing the Kát tree. "The soft tops of the twigs and tender leaves
are eaten," says his reviewer, "and produce an agreeable soothing
excitement, restoring from fatigue, banishing sleep, and disposing to
the enjoyment of conversation." What could be more dignified than to
browse the tree-tops with the camelopard? Who would not be a rabbit or
partridge sometimes, to chew mallows and pick the apple tree buds? It
is not hard to discover an instinct for the opium and betel and tobacco
chewers.[359]

* * * * *

After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and not the
style of expression, which makes the difference in books. For if I find
any thought worth extracting, I do not wish to alter the language. Then
the author seems to have had all the graces of eloquence and poetry
given him.

I am pleased to discover myself as much a pensioner in Nature as moles
and titmice. In some very direct and simple uses to which man puts
Nature he stands in this relation to her. Oriental life does not want
this grandeur. It is in Sadi and the Arabian Nights and the Fables of
Pilpay. In the New England noontide I have discovered more materials
of Oriental history than the Sanskrit contains or Sir W. Jones has
unlocked. I see why it is necessary there should be such history at
all. Was not Asia mapped in my brain before it was in any geography? In
my brain is the Sanskrit which contains the history of the primitive
times. The Vedas and their Angas are not so ancient as my serenest
contemplations.[360] My mind contemplates them, as Brahma his scribe.

* * * * *

I occasionally find myself to be nothing at all, because the gods give
me nothing to do. I cannot brag; I can only congratulate my masters.

In idleness I am of no thickness, I am thinnest wafer. I never compass
my own ends. God schemes for me.

We have our times of action and our times of reflection. The one mood
caters for the other. Now I am Alexander, and then I am Homer. One while
my hand is impatient to handle an axe or hoe, and at another to [_sic_]
pen. I am sure I write the tougher truth for these calluses on my palms.
They give firmness to the sentence. The sentences of a laboring man are
like hardened thongs, or the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the
pine.[361]

_March 24. Thursday._ Those authors are successful who do not _write
down_ to others, but make their own taste and judgment their audience.
By some strange infatuation we forget that we do not approve what yet
we recommend to others. It is enough if I please myself with writing;
I am then sure of an audience.

* * * * *

If hoarded treasures can make me rich, have I not the wealth of the
planet in my mines and at the bottom of the sea?

* * * * *

It is always singular to meet common sense in very old books, as the
Veeshnoo Sarma,—as if they could have dispensed with the experience of
later times.[362] We had not given space enough to _their_ antiquity
for the accumulation of wisdom. We meet even a trivial wisdom in them,
as if truth were already hackneyed. The present is always younger than
antiquity. A playful wisdom, which has eyes behind as well as before and
oversees itself. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that
it sometimes reflect upon itself, that it pleasantly behold itself, that
it hold the scales over itself.[363] The wise can afford to doubt in
his wisest moment. The easiness of doubt is the ground of his assurance.
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not
believe.

It is seen in this old scripture how wisdom is older than the talent
of composition. It is a simple and not a compound rock. The story is
as slender as the thread on which pearls are strung; it is a spiral
line, growing more and more perplexed till it winds itself up and dies
like the silkworm in its cocoon. It is an interminable labyrinth. It
seems as if the old philosopher could not talk without moving, and each
motion were made the apology or occasion for a sentence, but, this being
found inconvenient, the fictitious progress of the tale was invented.
The story which winds between and around these sentences, these barrows
in the desert, these oases, is as indistinct as a camel track between
Mourzuk and Darfur, between the Pyramids and the Nile, from Gaza to
Jaffa.[364]

The great thoughts of a wise man seem to the vulgar who do not
generalize to stand far apart like isolated mounts; but science knows
that the mountains which rise so solitary in our midst are parts of a
great mountain-chain, dividing the earth, and the eye that looks into
the horizon toward the blue Sierra melting away in the distance may
detect their flow of thought. These sentences which take up your common
life so easily are not seen to run into ridges, because they are the
table-land on which the spectator stands.[365] I do not require that
the mountain-peaks be chained together, but by the common basis on
which they stand, nor that the path of the muleteer be kept open at so
much pains, when they may be bridged by the Milky Way. That they stand
frowning upon one another, or mutually reflecting the sun's rays, is
proof enough of their common basis.

* * * * *

The book should be found where the sentence is, and its connection be
as inartificial. It is the inspiration of a day and not of a moment.
The links should be gold also. Better that the good be not united than
that a bad man be admitted into their society. When men can select they
will. If there be any stone in the quarry better than the rest, they
will forsake the rest because of it. Only the good will be quarried.

In these fables the story goes unregarded, while the reader leaps from
sentence to sentence, as the traveller leaps from stone to stone while
the water rushes unheeded between them.[366]

_March 25. Friday._ Great persons are not soon learned, not even their
outlines, but they change like the mountains in the horizon as we ride
along.

* * * * *

A man's life should be as fresh as a river. It should be the same
channel, but a new water every instant.[367] Some men have no
inclination; they have no rapids nor cascades, but marshes, and
alligators, and miasma instead.[368]

How insufficient is all wisdom without love! There may be courtesy,
there may be good will, there may be even temper, there may be wit,
and talent, and sparkling conversation,—and yet the soul pine for
life. Just so sacred and rich as my life is to myself will it be to
another. Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and
skill without. Our life without love is like coke and ashes,—like the
cocoanut in which the milk is dried up. I want to see the sweet sap
of living wood in it. Men may be pure as alabaster and Parian marble,
elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Terni, but if they are not in
society as retiring and inexperienced as children, we shall go join
Alaric and the Goths and Vandals. There is no milk mixed with the wine
at the entertainment.[369]

Enthusiasm which is the formless material of thought. Comparatively
speaking, I care not for the man or his designs who would make the
highest use of me short of an all-adventuring friendship. I wish by the
behavior of my friend toward me to be led to have such regard for myself
as for a box of precious ointment. I shall not be so cheap to myself if
I see that another values me.

We talk much about education, and yet none will assume the office of an
educator. I never gave any one the whole advantage of myself. I never
afforded him the culture of my love. How can I talk of charity, who at
last withhold the kindness which alone makes charity desirable? The poor
want nothing less than me myself, and I shirk charity by giving rags
and meat.

Very dangerous is the talent of composition, the striking out the heart
of life at a blow, as the Indian takes off a scalp. I feel as if my life
had grown more outward since I could express it.[370]

What can I give or what deny to another but myself?

The stars are God's dreams, thoughts remembered in the silence of his
night.

In company, that person who alone can understand you you cannot get out
of your mind.

The artist must work with indifferency. Too great interest vitiates his
work.

_March 26. Saturday._ The wise will not be imposed on by wisdom. You
can tell, but what do you know?

I thank God that the cheapness which appears in time and the world,
the trivialness of the whole scheme of things, is in my own cheap and
trivial moment. I am time and the world. I assert no independence. In me
are summer and winter, village life and commercial routine, pestilence
and famine and refreshing breezes, joy and sadness, life and death.
How near is yesterday! How far to-morrow! I have seen nails which were
driven before I was born. Why do they look old and rusty? Why does not
God make some mistake to show to us that time is a delusion? Why did I
invent time but to destroy it?

Did you ever remember the moment when you were not mean?

Is it not a satire to say that life is organic?

Where is my heart gone? They say men cannot part with it and live.

* * * * *

Are setting hens troubled with ennui? Nature is very kind; does she let
them reflect? These long March days, setting on and on in the crevice
of a hayloft, with no active employment![371] Do setting hens sleep?

* * * * *

A book should be a vein of gold ore, as the sentence is a diamond found
in the sand, or a pearl fished out of the sea.

He who does not borrow trouble does not lend it.

I must confess I have felt mean enough when asked how I was to act
on society, what errand I had to mankind. Undoubtedly I did not feel
mean without a reason, and yet my loitering is not without defense. I
would fain communicate the wealth of my life to men, would really give
them what is most precious in my gift. I would secrete pearls with the
shellfish and lay up honey with the bees for them. I will sift the
sunbeams for the public good. I know no riches I would keep back. I
have no private good, unless it be my peculiar ability to serve the
public. This is the only individual property. Each one may thus be
innocently rich. I inclose and foster the pearl till it is grown. I wish
to communicate those parts of my life which I would gladly live again
myself.

It is hard to be a good citizen of the world in any great sense; but if
we do render no interest or increase to mankind out of that talent God
gave us, we can at least preserve the principle unimpaired. One would
like to be making large dividends to society out [of] that deposited
capital in us, but he does well for the most part if he proves a secure
investment only, without adding to the stock.

In such a letter as I like there will be the most naked and direct
speech, the least circumlocution.

_March 27. Sunday._ The eye must be firmly anchored to this earth which
beholds birches and pines waving in the breeze in a certain fight, a
serene rippling light.

* * * * *

Cliffs.—Two little hawks have just come out to play, like butterflies
rising one above the other in endless alternation far below me. They
swoop from side to side in the broad basin of the tree-tops, with wider
and wider surges, as if swung by an invisible pendulum. They stoop down
on this side and scale up on that.

Suddenly I look up and see a new bird, probably an eagle, quite above
me, laboring with the wind not more than forty rods off. It was the
largest bird of the falcon kind I ever saw. I was never so impressed by
any flight. She sailed the air, and fell back from time to time like a
ship on her beam ends, holding her talons up as if ready for the arrows.
I never allowed before for the grotesque attitudes of our national
bird.[372]

The eagle must have an educated eye.

See what a life the gods have given us, set round with pain and
pleasure. It is too strange for sorrow; it is too strange for joy. One
while it looks as shallow, though as intricate, as a Cretan labyrinth,
and again it is a pathless depth. I ask for bread incessantly,—that my
life sustain me, as much as meat my body. No man knoweth in what hour
his life may come. Say not that Nature is trivial, for to-morrow she
will be radiant with beauty. I am as old—as old as the Alleghanies. I
was going to say Wachusett, but it excites a youthful feeling, as I were
but too happy to be so young.

_March 28. Monday._ How often must one feel, as he looks back on his
past life, that he has gained a talent but lost a character! My life
has got down into my fingers. My inspiration at length is only so much
breath as I can breathe.

Society affects to estimate men by their talents, but really feels and
knows them by their characters. What a man does, compared with what he
is, is but a small part. To require that our friend possess a certain
skill is not to be satisfied till he is something less than our friend.

Friendship should be a great promise, a perennial springtime.

I can conceive how the life of the gods may be dull and tame, if it is
not disappointed and insatiate.

* * * * *

One may well feel chagrined when he finds he can do nearly all he can
conceive.

Some books ripple on like a stream, and we feel that the author is in
the full tide of discourse. Plato and Jamblichus and Pythagoras and
Bacon halt beside them. Long, stringy, slimy thoughts which flow or run
together. They read as if written for military men or men of business,
there is such a dispatch in them, and a double-quick time, a Saratoga
march with beat of drum. But the grave thinkers and philosophers seem
not to have got their swaddling-clothes off; they are slower than a
Roman army on its march, the rear encampment to-night where the van
camped last night. The wise Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery
slough.

But the reviewer seizes the pen and shouts, "Forward! Alamo and
Fanning!" and after rolls the tide of war. Immediately the author
discovers himself launched, and if the slope was easy and the grease
good, does not go to the bottom.

They flow as glibly as mill-streams sucking under a race-way. The flow
is ofttimes in the poor reader who makes such haste over their pages,
as to the traveller the walls and fences seem to travel. But the most
rapid trot is no flow after all.[373]

If I cannot chop wood in the yard, can I not chop wood in my journal?
Can I not give vent to that appetite so? I wish to relieve myself of
superfluous energy. How poor is the life of the best and wisest! The
petty side will appear at last. Understand once how the best in society
live,—with what routine, with what tedium and insipidity, with what
grimness and defiance, with what chuckling over an exaggeration of the
sunshine. Altogether, are not the actions of your great man poor, even
pitiful and ludicrous?

I am astonished, I must confess, that man looks so respectable in
nature, considering the littlenesses Socrates must descend to in the
twenty-four hours, that he yet wears a serene countenance and even
adorns nature.

_March 29. Tuesday._

_March 30. Wednesday._ Though Nature's laws are more immutable than any
despot's, yet to our daily life they rarely seem rigid, but we relax
with license in summer weather. We are not often nor harshly reminded
of the things we may not do. I am often astonished to see how long, and
with what manifold infringements of the natural laws, some men I meet
in the highway maintain life. She does not deny them quarter; they do
not die without priest. All the while she rejoices, for if they are not
one part of her they are another. I am convinced that consistency is the
secret of health. How many a poor man, striving to live a pure life,
pines and dies after a life of sickness, and his successors doubt if
Nature is not pitiless; while the confirmed and consistent sot, who is
content with his rank life like mushrooms, a mass of corruption, still
dozes comfortably under a hedge. He has made his peace with himself;
there is no strife. Nature is really very kind and liberal to all
persons of vicious habits. They take great licenses with her. She does
not exhaust them with many excesses.[374]

* * * * *

How hard it is to be greatly related to mankind! They are only my uncles
and aunts and cousins. I hear of some persons greatly related, but
only he is so who has all mankind for his friend. Our intercourse with
the best grows soon shallow and trivial. They no longer inspire us.
After enthusiasm comes insipidity and blankness. The sap of all noble
schemes drieth up, and the schemers return again and again in despair
to "common sense and labor." If I could help infuse some life and heart
into society, should I not do a service? Why will not the gods mix a
little of the wine of nobleness with the air we drink? Let virtue have
some firm foothold in the earth. Where does she dwell? Who are the
salt of the earth? May not Love have some resting-place on the earth as
sure [as] the sunshine on the rock? The crystals imbedded in the cliff
sparkle and gleam from afar, as if they did certainly enrich our planet;
but where does any virtue permanently sparkle and gleam? She was sent
forth over the waste too soon, before the earth was prepared for her.

Rightfully we are to each other the gate of heaven and redeemers from
sin, but now we overlook these lowly and narrow ways. We will go over
the bald mountain-tops without going through the valleys.

* * * * *

Men do not after all meet on the ground of their real acquaintance and
actual understanding of one another, but degrade themselves immediately
into the puppets of convention. They do as if, in given circumstances,
they had agreed to know each other only so well. They rarely get to that
[point] that they inform one another gratuitously, and use each other
like the sea and woods for what is new and inspiring there.

The best intercourse and communion they have is in silence above and
behind their speech. We should be very simple to rely on words. As
it is, what we knew before always interprets a man's words. I cannot
easily remember what any man has said, but how can I forget what he is
to me? We know each other better than we are aware; we are admitted to
startling privacies with every person we meet, and in some emergency we
shall find how well we knew him. To my solitary and distant thought my
neighbor is shorn of his halo, and is seen as privately and barely as
a star through a glass.

_March 31. Thursday._ I cannot forget the majesty of that bird at the
Cliff. It was no sloop or smaller craft hove in sight, but a ship of the
line, worthy to struggle with the elements. It was a great presence, as
of the master of river and forest. His eye would not have quailed before
the owner of the soil; none could challenge his rights. And then his
retreat, sailing so steadily away, was a kind of advance. How is it that
man always feels like an interloper in nature, as if he had intruded on
the domains of bird and beast?[375]

* * * * *

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with
work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and
leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is
only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the
value of the husk. Why should the hen set all day? She can lay but one
egg, and besides she will not have picked up materials for a new one.
Those who work much do not work hard.[376]

* * * * *

Nothing is so rare as sense. Very uncommon sense is poetry, and has a
heroic or sweet music. But in verse, for the most part, the music now
runs before and then behind the sense, but is never coincident with it.
Given the metre, and one will make music while another makes sense. But
good verse, like a good soldier, will make its own music, and it will
march to the same with one consent. In most verse there is no inherent
music. The man should not march, but walk like a citizen. It is not time
of war but peace. Boys study the metres to write Latin verses, but it
does not help them to write English.

* * * * *

Lydgate's "Story of Thebes," intended for a Canterbury Tale, is a
specimen of most unprogressive, unmusical verse. Each line rings the
knell of its brother, as if it were introduced but to dispose of him. No
mortal man could have breathed to that cadence without long intervals of
relaxation; the repetition would have been fatal to the lungs. No doubt
there was much healthy exercise taken in the meanwhile. He should forget
his rhyme and tell his story, or forget his story and breathe himself.

In Shakespeare and elsewhere the climax may be somewhere along the line,
which runs as varied and meandering as a country road, but in Lydgate
it is nowhere but in the rhyme. The couplets slope headlong to their
confluence.

_April 2. Saturday._[377] The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is full
of good sense and humanity, but is not transcendent poetry. It is so
good that it seems like faultfinding to esteem it second to any other.
For picturesque description of persons it is without a parallel. It did
not need inspiration, but a cheerful and easy wit. It is essentially
humorous, as no inspired poetry is. Genius is so serious as to be grave
and sublime rather. Humor takes a narrower vision—however broad and
genial it may be—than enthusiasm. Humor delays and looks back.[378]

_April 3. Sunday._ I can remember when I was more enriched by a few
cheap rays of light falling on the pond-side than by this broad sunny
day. Riches have wings, indeed. The weight of present woe will express
the sweetness of past experience. When sorrow comes, how easy it is to
remember pleasure! When, in winter, the bees cannot make new honey, they
consume the old.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Sorrow singeth the sweetest strain: "The Daughters of Zion," "The Last
Sigh of the Moor."

Joy is the nectar of flowers, sorrow the honey of bees.

I thank God for sorrow. It is hard to be abused. Is not He kind still,
who lets this south wind blow, this warm sun shine on me?

I have just heard the flicker among the oaks on the hillside ushering in
a new dynasty. It is the age and youth of time. Why did Nature set this
lure for sickly mortals? Eternity could not begin with more security and
momentousness than the spring. The summer's eternity is reëstablished by
this note.[379] All sights and sounds are seen and heard both in time
and eternity. And when the eternity of any sight or sound strikes the
eye or ear, they are intoxicated with delight.

Sometimes, as through a dim haze, we see objects in their eternal
relations; and they stand like Stonehenge and the Pyramids, and we
wonder who set them up and what for.

The destiny of the soul can never be studied by the reason, for its
modes are not ecstatic. In the wisest calculation or demonstration I
but play a game with myself. I am not to be taken captive by myself.

I cannot convince myself. God must convince. I can calculate a problem
in arithmetic, but not any morality.

Virtue is incalculable, as it is inestimable. Well, man's destiny is
but virtue, or manhood. It is wholly moral, to be learned only by the
life of the soul. God cannot calculate it. He has no moral philosophy,
no ethics. The reason, before it can be applied to such a subject, will
have to fetter and restrict it. How can he, step by step, perform that
long journey who has not conceived whither he is bound? How can he
expect to perform an arduous journey without interruption who has no
passport to the end?

On one side of man is the actual, and on the other the ideal. The former
is the province of the reason; it is even a divine light when directed
upon it, but it cannot reach forward into the ideal without blindness.
The moon was made to rule by night, but the sun to rule by day. Reason
will be but a pale cloud, like the moon, when one ray of divine light
comes to illumine the soul.

How rich and lavish must be the system which can afford to let so many
moons burn all the day as well as the night, though no man stands in
need of their light! There is none of that kind of economy in Nature
that husbands its stock, but she supplies inexhaustible means to the
most frugal methods. The poor may learn of her frugality, and the rich
generosity. Having carefully determined the extent of her charity,
she establishes it forever; her almsgiving is an annuity. She supplies
to the bee only so much wax as is necessary for its cell, so that no
poverty could stint it more; but the little economist which fed the
Evangelist in the desert still keeps in advance of the immigrant, and
fills the cavities of the forest for his repast.

VII

1845-1846

(ÆT. 27-29)

_July 5. Saturday._ Walden.—Yesterday I came here to live. My house
makes me think of some mountain houses I have seen, which seemed to
have a fresher auroral atmosphere about them, as I fancy of the halls
of Olympus. I lodged at the house of a saw-miller last summer, on the
Caatskill Mountains, high up as Pine Orchard, in the blueberry and
raspberry region, where the quiet and cleanliness and coolness seemed to
be all one,—which had their ambrosial character. He was the miller of
the Kaaterskill Falls. They were a clean and wholesome family, inside
and out, like their house. The latter was not plastered, only lathed,
and the inner doors were not hung. The house seemed high-placed, airy,
and perfumed, fit to entertain a travelling god. It was so high, indeed,
that all the music, the broken strains, the waifs and accompaniments of
tunes, that swept over the ridge of the Caatskills, passed through its
aisles. Could not man be man in such an abode? And would he ever find
out this grovelling life?[380] It was the very light and atmosphere in
which the works of Grecian art were composed, and in which they rest.
They have appropriated to themselves a loftier hall than mortals ever
occupy, at least on a level with the mountain-brows of the world. There
was wanting a little of the glare of the lower vales, and in its place
a pure twilight as became the precincts of heaven. Yet so equable and
calm was the season there that you could not tell whether it was morning
or noon or evening. Always there was the sound of the morning cricket.

_July 6._ I wish to meet the facts of life—the vital facts, which are
the phenomena or actuality the gods meant to show us—face to face, and
so I came down here. Life! who knows what it is, what it does? If I am
not quite right here, I am less wrong than before; and now let us see
what they will have. The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy
farmers on their day of rest, at the end of the week,—for Sunday always
seemed to me like a fit conclusion of an ill-spent week and not the
fresh and brave beginning of a new one,—with this one other draggletail
and postponed affair of a sermon, from thirdly to fifteenthly, should
teach them with a thundering voice pause and simplicity. "Stop! Avast!
Why so fast?"[381] In all studies we go not forward but rather backward
with redoubled pauses. We always study _antiques_ with silence and
reflection. Even time has a depth, and below its surface the waves do
not lapse and roar. I wonder men can be so frivolous almost as to attend
to the gross form of negro slavery, there are so many keen and subtle
masters who subject us both. Self-emancipation in the West Indies of a
man's thinking and imagining provinces, which should be more than his
island territory,—one emancipated heart and intellect! It would knock
off the fetters from a million slaves.

_July 7._ I am glad to remember to-night, as I sit by my door, that
I too am at least a remote descendant of that heroic race of men of
whom there is tradition. I too sit here on the shore of my Ithaca, a
fellow-wanderer and survivor of Ulysses. How symbolical, significant
of I know not what, the pitch pine stands here before my door! Unlike
any glyph I have seen sculptured or painted yet, one of Nature's later
designs, yet perfect as her Grecian art. There it is, a done tree. Who
can mend it? And now where is the generation of heroes whose lives are
to pass amid these our northern pines, whose exploits shall appear to
posterity pictured amid these strong and shaggy forms? Shall there be
only arrows and bows to go with these pines on some pipe-stone quarry
at length? There is something more respectable than railroads in these
simple relics of the Indian race. What hieroglyphs shall we add to the
pipe-stone quarry?

* * * * *

If we can forget, we have done somewhat; if we can remember, we have
done somewhat. Let us remember this.

* * * * *

The Great Spirit makes indifferent all times and places. The place where
he is seen is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our
senses. We had allowed only neighboring and transient circumstances to
make our occasions. They were, in fact, the causes of our distractions.
But nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next
to us the grandest laws are being enacted and administered. Next to us
is not the workman whom we have hired, but ever the workman whose work
we are. He is at work, not in my backyard, but inconceivably nearer
than that. We are the subjects of an experiment how singular! Can we
not dispense with the society of our gossips a little while under these
circumstances?

* * * * *

My auxiliaries are the dews and rains,—to water this dry soil,—and
genial fatness in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and
effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
They have nibbled for me an eighth of an acre clean. I plant in faith,
and they reap. This is the tax I pay for ousting johnswort and the rest.
But soon the surviving beans will be too tough for woodchucks, and then
they will go forward to meet new foes.[382]

_July 14._ What sweet and tender, the most innocent and divinely
encouraging society there is in every natural object, and so in
universal nature, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man!
There can be no really black melan-choly to him who lives in the midst
of nature and has still his senses. There never was yet such a storm but
it was Æolian music to the innocent ear. Nothing can compel to a vulgar
sadness a simple and brave man. While I enjoy the sweet friendship of
the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. This rain
which is now watering my beans and keeping me in the house waters me
too. I needed it as much. And what if most are not hoed! Those who send
the rain, whom I chiefly respect, will pardon me.[383]

Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, methinks I am favored
by the gods. They seem to whisper joy to me beyond my deserts, and that
I do have a solid warrant and surety at their hands, which my fellows
do not. I do not flatter myself, but if it were possible _they_ flatter
me. I am especially guided and guarded.[384]

* * * * *

What was seen true once, and sanctioned by the flash of Jove, will
always be true, and nothing can hinder it. I have the warrant that no
fair dream I have had need fail of its fulfillment.

Here I know I am in good company; here is the world, its centre and
metropolis, and all the palms of Asia and the laurels of Greece and the
firs of the Arctic Zone incline thither. Here I can read Homer, if I
would have books, as well as in Ionia, and not wish myself in Boston,
or New York, or London, or Rome, or Greece. In such place as this he
wrote or sang. Who should come to my lodge just now but a true Homeric
boor, one of those Paphlagonian men? Alek Therien, he called himself;
a Canadian now, a woodchopper, a post-maker; makes fifty posts—holes
them, _i. e._—in a day; and who made his last supper on a woodchuck
which his dog caught. And he too has heard of Homer, and _if it were
not for books, would not know what to do_ rainy days. Some priest once,
who could read glibly from the Greek itself, taught him reading in a
measure—his verse, at least, in his turn—away by the Trois Rivières, at
Nicolet. And now I must read to him, while he holds the book, Achilles'
reproof of Patroclus on his sad countenance.

"Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young child (girl)?" etc., etc.

"Or have you only heard some news from Phthia?
They say that Menœtius lives yet, son of Actor,
And Peleus lives, son of Æacus, among the Myrmidons,
Both of whom having died, we should greatly grieve."

He has a neat[385] bundle of white oak bark under his arm for a sick
man, gathered this Sunday morning. "I suppose there's no harm in going
after such a thing to-day."[386] The simple man. May the gods send him
many woodchucks.

And earlier to-day came five Lestrigones, railroad men who take care
of the road, some of them at least. They still represent the bodies of
men, transmitting arms and legs and bowels downward from those remote
days to more remote. They have some got a rude wisdom withal, thanks
to their dear experience. And one with them, a handsome younger man, a
sailor-like, Greek-like man, says: "Sir, I like your notions. I think I
shall live so myself. Only I should like a wilder country, where there
is more game. I have been among the Indians near Appalachicola. I have
lived with them. I like your kind of life. Good day. I wish you success
and happiness."

Therien said this morning (July 16th, Wednesday), "If those beans
were mine, I shouldn't like to hoe them till the dew was off." He was
going to his woodchopping. "Ah!" said I, "that is one of the notions
the farmers have got, but I don't believe it." "How thick the pigeons
are!" said he. "If working every day were not my trade, I could get
all the meat I should want by hunting,—pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits,
partridges,—by George! I could get all I should want for a week in one
day."[387]

* * * * *

I imagine it to be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier
life, though in the midst of an outward civilization. Of course all
the improvements of the ages do not carry a man backward nor forward in
relation to the great facts of his existence.[388]

Our furniture should be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's.[389] At
first the thoughtful, wondering man plucked in haste the fruits which
the boughs extended to him, and found in the sticks and stones around
him his implements ready to crack the nut, to wound the beast, and
build his house with. And he still remembered that he was a sojourner
in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his
journey again. He dwelt in a tent in this world. He was either threading
the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops.[390]

* * * * *

Now the best works of art serve comparatively but to dissipate the mind,
for they themselves represent transitionary and paroxysmal, not free
and absolute, thoughts.

* * * * *

Men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently
plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer.[391]

* * * * *

There are scores of pitch pines in my field, from one to three inches
in diameter, girdled by the mice last winter. A Norwegian winter it was
for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they had to mix much pine
meal with their usual diet. Yet these trees have not many of them died,
even in midsummer, and laid bare for a foot, but have grown a foot. They
seem to do all their gnawing beneath the snow. There is not much danger
of the mouse tribe becoming extinct in hard winters, for their granary
is a cheap and extensive one.[392]

Here is one has had her nest under my house, and came when I took my
luncheon to pick the crumbs at my feet. It had never seen the race of
man before, and so the sooner became familiar. It ran over my shoes and
up my pantaloons inside, clinging to my flesh with its sharp claws. It
would run up the side of the room by short impulses like a squirrel,
which [it] resembles, coming between the house mouse and the former. Its
belly is a little reddish, and its ears a little longer. At length, as
I leaned my elbow on the bench, it ran over my arm and round the paper
which contained my dinner. And when I held it a piece of cheese, it came
and nibbled between my fingers, and then cleaned its face and paws like
a fly.[393]

* * * * *

There is a memorable interval between the written and the spoken
language, the language read and the language heard. The one is
transient, a sound, a tongue, a dialect, and all men learn it of their
mothers. It is loquacious, fragmentary,—raw material. The other is a
reserved, select, matured expression, a deliberate word addressed to
the ear of nations and generations. The one is natural and convenient,
the other divine and instructive. The clouds flit here below, genial,
refreshing with their showers and gratifying with their tints,—alternate
sun and shade, a grosser heaven adapted to our trivial wants; but above
them repose the blue firmament and the stars. The stars are written
words and stereotyped on the blue parchment of the skies; the fickle
clouds that hide them from our view, which we on this side need, though
heaven does not, these are our daily colloquies, our vaporous, garrulous
breath.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
The herd of men, the generations who speak the Greek and Latin, are
not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius,
whose mother tongue speaks everywhere, and is learned by every child
who hears. The army of the Greeks and Latins are not coæternary,
though contemporary, with Homer and Plato, Virgil and Cicero. In the
transition ages, nations who loudest spoke the Greek and Latin tongues,
whose mother's milk they were, learned not their nobler dialects,
but a base and vulgar speech. The men of the Middle Ages who spoke so
glibly the language of the Roman and, in the Eastern Empire, of the
Athenian mob, prized only a cheap contemporary learning. The classics
of both languages were virtually lost and forgotten. When, after
the several nations of Europe had acquired in some degree rude and
original languages of their own, sufficient for the arts of life and
conversation, then the few scholars beheld with advantage from this
more distant standpoint the treasures of antiquity, and a new Latin
age commenced, the era of reading. Those works of genius were then
first classical. All those millions who had spoken Latin and Greek
had not read Latin and Greek. The time had at length arrived for the
written word, the _scripture_, to be heard. What the multitude could
not _hear_, after the lapse of centuries a few scholars _read_. This is
the matured thought which was not spoken in the market-place, unless it
be in a market-place where the free genius of mankind resorts to-day.
There is something very choice and select in a written word. No wonder
Alexander carried his Homer in a precious casket on his expeditions. A
word which may be translated into every dialect, and suggests a truth
to every mind, is the most perfect work of human art; and as it may
be breathed and taken on our lips, and, as it were, become the product
of our physical organs, as its sense is of our intellectual, it is the
nearest to life itself.[394] It is the simplest and purest channel by
which a revelation may be transmitted from age to age. How it subsists
itself whole and undiminished till the intelligent reader is born to
decipher it! There are the tracks of Zoroaster, of Confucius and Moses,
indelible in the sands of the remotest times.

* * * * *

There are no monuments of antiquity comparable to the classics for
interest and importance. It does not need that the scholar should be
an antiquarian, for these works of art have such an immortality as the
works of nature, and are modern at the same time that they are ancient,
like the sun and stars, and occupy by right no small share of the
present. This palpable beauty is the treasured wealth of the world and
the proper inheritance of each generation. Books, the oldest and the
best, stand rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have not to
plead their cause, but they enlighten their readers and it is gained.
When the illiterate and scornful rustic earns his imagined leisure and
wealth, he turns inevitably at last—he or his children—to these still
higher and yet inaccessible circles; and even when his descendant has
attained to move in the highest rank of the wise men of his own age
and country, he will still be sensible only of the imperfection of his
culture and the vanity and inefficiency of his intellectual wealth, if
his genius will not permit him to listen with somewhat of the equanimity
of an equal to the fames of godlike men, which yet, as it were, form an
invisible upper class in every society.[395]

* * * * *

I have carried an apple in my pocket to-night—a sopsivine, they call
it—till, now that I take my handkerchief out, it has got so fine a
fragrance that it really seems like a friendly trick of some pleasant
dæmon to entertain me with.[396] It is redolent of sweet-scented
orchards, of innocent, teeming harvests. I realize the existence of a
goddess Pomona, and that the gods have really intended that men should
feed divinely, like themselves, on their own nectar and ambrosia. They
have so painted this fruit, and freighted it with such a fragrance,
that it satisfies much more than an animal appetite. Grapes, peaches,
berries, nuts, etc., are likewise provided for those who will sit at
their sideboard. I have felt, when partaking of this inspiring diet,
that my appetite was an indifferent consideration; that eating became
a sacrament, a method of communion, an ecstatic exercise, a mingling
of bloods, and [a] sitting at the communion table of the world; and so
have not only quenched my thirst at the spring but the health of the
universe.

The indecent haste and grossness with which our food is swallowed have
cast a disgrace on the very act of eating itself. But I do believe that,
if this process were rightly conducted, its aspect and effects would
be wholly changed, and we should receive our daily life and health,
Antæus-like, with an ecstatic delight, and, with upright front, an
innocent and graceful behavior, take our strength from day to day. This
fragrance of the apple in my pocket has, I confess, deterred me from
eating of it. I am more effectually fed by it another way.

It is, indeed, the common notion that this fragrance is the only food
of the gods, and inasmuch as we are partially divine we are compelled
to respect it.

Tell me, ye wise ones, if ye can,
Whither and whence the race of man.
For I have seen his slender clan
Clinging to hoar hills with their feet,
Threading the forest for their meat.
Moss and lichens, bark and grain
They rake together with might and main,
And they digest them with anxiety and pain.
I meet them in their rags and unwashed hair,
Instructed to eke out their scanty fare—
Brave race—with a yet humbler prayer.
Beggars they are, aye, on the largest scale.
They beg their daily bread at heaven's door,
And if their this year's crop alone should fail,
They neither bread nor begging would know more.
They are the titmen of their race,
And hug the vales with mincing pace
Like Troglodytes, and fight with cranes.
We walk 'mid great relations' feet.
What they let fall alone we eat.
We are only able
To catch the fragments from their table.
These elder brothers of our race,
By us unseen, with larger pace
Walk o'er our heads, and live our lives,
Embody our desires and dreams,
Anticipate our hoped-for gleams.
We grub the earth for our food.
We know not what is good.
Where does the fragrance of our orchards go,
Our vineyards, while we toil below?
A finer race and finer fed
Feast and revel above our head.
The tints and fragrance of the flowers and fruits
Are but the crumbs from off their table,
While we consume the pulp and roots.
Sometimes we do assert our kin,
And stand a moment where once they have been.
We hear their sounds and see their sights,
And we experience their delights.
But for the moment that we stand
Astonished on the Olympian land,
We do discern no traveller's face,
No elder brother of our race,
To lead us to the monarch's court
And represent our case;
But straightway we must journey back,
Retracing slow the arduous track,
Without the privilege to tell,
Even, the sight we know so well.[397]

In my father's house are many mansions.

Who ever explored the mansions of the air? Who knows who his neighbors
are? We seem to lead our human lives amid a concentric system of
worlds, of realm on realm, close bordering on each other, where dwell
the unknown and the imagined races, as various in degree as our own
thoughts are,—a system of invisible partitions more infinite in number
and more inconceivable in intricacy than the starry one which science
has penetrated.

When I play my flute to-night, earnest as if to leap the bounds [of] the
narrow fold where human life is penned, and range the surrounding plain,
I hear echo from a neighboring wood, a stolen pleasure, occasionally
not rightfully heard, much more for other ears than ours, for 'tis the
reverse of sound. It is not our own melody that comes back to us, but an
amended strain. And I would only hear myself as I would hear my echo,
corrected and repronounced for me. It is as when my friend reads my
verse.

The borders of our plot are set with flowers, whose seeds were blown
from more Elysian fields adjacent. They are the pot-herbs of the gods,
which our laborious feet have never reached, and fairer fruits and
unaccustomed fragrance betray another realm's vicinity. There, too, is
Echo found, with which we play at evening. There is the abutment of the
rainbow's arch.[398]

_Aug. 6._ Walden.—I have just been reading a book called "The Crescent
and the Cross,"[399] till now I am somewhat ashamed of myself. Am I
sick, or idle, that I can sacrifice my energy, America, and to-day to
this man's ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but
names, and still more desert sand and at length a wave of the great
ocean itself are needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their
grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! this is Carnac for me, and I behold the
columns of a larger and a purer temple.[400] May our childish and fickle
aspirations be divine, while we descend to this mean intercourse. Our
reading should be heroic, in an unknown tongue, a dialect always but
imperfectly learned, through which we stammer line by line, catching but
a glimmering of the sense, and still afterward admiring its unexhausted
hieroglyphics, its untranslated columns. Here grow around me nameless
trees and shrubs, each morning freshly sculptured, rising new stories
day by day, instead of hideous ruins,—their myriad-handed worker
uncompelled as uncompelling. This is my Carnac; that its unmeasured
dome. The measuring art man has invented flourishes and dies upon this
temple's floor, nor ever dreams to reach that ceiling's height. Carnac
and Luxor crumble underneath. Their shadowy roofs let in the light once
more reflected from the ceiling of the sky.

Behold these flowers! Let us be up with Time, not dreaming of three
thousand years ago. Erect ourselves and let those columns lie, not stoop
to raise a foil against the sky. Where is the _spirit_ of that time but
in this present day, this present line? Three thousand years ago are
not agone; they are still lingering here this summer morn.

And Memnon's mother sprightly greets us now;
Wears still her youthful blushes on her brow.
And Carnac's columns, why stand they on the plain?
T' enjoy our opportunities they would fain remain.

This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome
Shelters the measuring art and measurer's home,
Whose propylæum is the system high [?]
And sculptured façade the visible sky.

Where there is memory which compelleth Time, the Muses' mother, and the
Muses nine, there are all ages, past and future time,—unwearied memory
that does not forget the actions of the past, that does not forego
to stamp them freshly, that Old Mortality, industrious to retouch the
monuments of time, in the world's cemetery throughout every clime.[401]

* * * * *

The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the original Greek; for to do
so implies to emulate their heroes,—the consecration of morning hours
to their pages.

The heroic books, though printed in the character of our mother tongue,
are always written in a foreign language, dead to idle and degenerate
times, and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line,
conjecturing a larger sense than the text renders us, at last, out of
our own valor and generosity.[402]

* * * * *

A man must find his own occasion in himself. The natural day is very
calm, and will hardly reprove our indolence. If there is no elevation
in our spirits, the pond will not seem elevated like a mountain tarn,
but a low pool, a silent muddy water, a place for fishermen.

I sit here at my window like a priest of Isis, and observe the phenomena
of three thousand years ago, yet unimpaired. The tantivy of wild
pigeons, an ancient race of birds, gives a voice to the air, flying by
twos and threes athwart my view or perching restless on the white pine
boughs occasionally; a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond
and brings up a fish; and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle
of railroad cars conveying travellers from Boston to the country.[403]

* * * * *

After the evening train has gone by and left the world to silence and
to me, the whip-poor-will chants her vespers for half an hour. And when
all is still at night, the owls take up the strain, like mourning women
their ancient ululu. Their most dismal scream is truly Ben-Jonsonian.
Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the
poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty,—but the
mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the
delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. And yet I love to hear
their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside,
reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds, as if it were the
dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs, that would fain
be sung. The spirits, the _low_ spirits and melancholy forebodings,
of fallen spirits who once in human shape night-walked the earth and
did the deeds of darkness, now expiating with their wailing hymns,
threnodiai, their sins in the very scenery of their transgressions. They
give me a new sense of the vastness and mystery of that nature which
is the common dwelling of us both. "Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been
bor-or-or-or-orn!" sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles in
the restlessness of despair to some new perch in the gray oaks. Then,
"That I never had been bor-or-or-or-orn!" echoes one on the further
side, with a tremulous sincerity, and "Bor-or-or-or-orn" comes faintly
from far in the Lincoln woods.[404]

* * * * *

And then the frogs, bullfrogs; they are the more sturdy spirits of
ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing
a catch in their Stygian lakes. They would fain keep up the hilarious
good fellowship and all the rules of their old round tables, but they
have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave and serious their voices, mocking
at mirth, and their wine has lost its flavor and is only liquor to
distend their paunches, and never comes sweet intoxication to drown
the memory of the past, but mere saturation and water-logged dullness
and distension. Still the most aldermanic, with his chin upon a pad,
which answers for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under the eastern
shore quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes
round the cup with the ejaculation _tr-r-r-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-r-r-oonk,
tr-r-r-r-oonk!_ and straightway comes over the water from some distant
cove the selfsame password, where the next in seniority and girth has
gulped down to his mark; and when the strain has made the circuit of
the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies with satisfaction
_tr-r-r-r-oonk!_ and each in turn repeats the sound, down to the least
distended, leakiest, flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and
the bowl goes round again, until the sun dispels the morning mist, and
only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing _troonk_
from time to time, pausing for a reply.[405]

* * * * *

All nature is classic and akin to art. The sumach and pine and hickory
which surround my house remind me of the most graceful sculpture.
Sometimes their tops, or a single limb or leaf, seems to have grown to a
distinct expression as if it were a symbol for me to interpret. Poetry,
painting, and sculpture claim at once and associate with themselves
those perfect specimens of the art of nature,—leaves, vines, acorns,
pine cones, etc. The critic must at last stand as mute though contented
before a true poem as before an acorn or a vine leaf. The perfect work
of art is received again into the bosom of nature whence its material
proceeded, and that criticism which can only detect its unnaturalness
has no longer any office to fulfill. The choicest maxims that have come
down to us are more beautiful or integrally wise than they are wise to
our understandings. This wisdom which we are inclined to pluck from
their stalk is the point only of a single association. Every natural
form—palm leaves and acorns, oak leaves and sumach and dodder—are
[_sic_] untranslatable aphorisms.

* * * * *

Twenty-three years since, when I was five years old, I was brought from
Boston to this pond, away in the country,—which was then but another
name for the extended world for me,—one of the most ancient scenes
stamped on the tablets of my memory, the oriental Asiatic valley of my
world, whence so many races and inventions have gone forth in recent
times. That woodland vision for a long time made the drapery of my
dreams. That sweet solitude my spirit seemed so early to require that
I might have room to entertain my thronging guests, and that speaking
silence that my ears might distinguish the significant sounds. Somehow
or other it at once gave the preference to this recess among the pines,
where almost sunshine and shadow were the only inhabitants that varied
the scene, over that tumultuous and varied city, as if it had found its
proper nursery.

Well, now, to-night my flute awakes the echoes over this very water,
but one generation of pines has fallen, and with their stumps I have
cooked my supper, and a lusty growth of oaks and pines is rising all
around its brim and preparing its wilder aspect for new infant eyes.
Almost the same johnswort springs from the same perennial root in this
pasture. Even I have at length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape
of my imagination, and one result of my presence and influence is seen
in these bean leaves and corn blades and potato vines.[406]

* * * * *

As difficult to preserve is the tenderness of your nature as the bloom
upon a peach.

Most men are so taken up with the cares and rude practice of life that
its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Literally, the laboring man
has not leisure for a strict and lofty integrity day by day; he cannot
afford to sustain the fairest and noblest relations. His labor will
depreciate in the market.

How can he remember well his ignorance who has so often to use his
knowledge.

_Aug. 15._ The sounds heard at this hour, 8.30, are the distant
rumbling of wagons over bridges,—a sound farthest heard of any human at
night,—the baying of dogs, the lowing of cattle in distant yards.[407]

What if we were to obey these fine dictates, these divine suggestions,
which are addressed to the mind and not to the body, which are certainly
true,—not to eat meat, not to buy, or sell, or barter, etc., etc., etc.?

* * * * *

I will not plant beans another summer, but sincerity, truth, simplicity,
faith, trust, innocence, and see if they will not grow in this soil
with such manure as I have, and sustain me.[408] When a man meets a
man, it should not be some uncertain appearance and falsehood, but
the personification of great qualities. Here comes truth, perchance,
personified, along the road.[409] Let me see how Truth behaves. I have
not seen enough of her. He shall utter no foreign word, no doubtful
sentence, and I shall not make haste to part with him.

I would not forget that I deal with infinite and divine qualities in
my fellow. All men, indeed, are divine in their core of light, but that
is indistinct and distant to me, like the stars of the least magnitude,
or the galaxy itself, but my kindred planets show their round disks and
even their attendant moons to my eye.

Even the tired laborers I meet on the road, I really meet as travelling
gods, but it is as yet, and must be for a long season, without speech.

_Aug. 23. Saturday._ I set out this afternoon to go a-fishing for
pickerel to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. From Walden I went
through the woods to Fair Haven, but by the way the rain came on again,
and my fates compelled me to stand a half-hour under a pine, piling
boughs over my head, and wearing my pocket handkerchief for an umbrella;
and when at length I had made one cast over the pickerel-weed, the
thunder gan romblen in the heven with that grisly steven that Chaucer
tells of.[410] (The gods must be proud, with such forked flashes and
such artillery to rout a poor unarmed fisherman.) I made haste to
the nearest hut for a shelter. This stood a half a mile off the road,
and so much the nearer to the pond. There dwelt a shiftless Irishman,
John Field, and his wife, and many children, from the broad-faced boy
that ran by his father's side to escape the rain to the wrinkled and
sibyl-like, crone-like infant, not knowing whether to take the part of
age or infancy, that sat upon its father's knee as in the palaces of
nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger
inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy; the
young creature not knowing but it might be the last of a line of kings
instead of John Field's poor starveling brat, or, I should rather
say, still knowing that it was the last of a noble line and the hope
and cynosure of the world. An honest, hard-working, but shiftless man
plainly was John Field; and his wife, she too was brave to cook so many
succeeding dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove; with round,
greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to improve her condition one
day; with the never absent mop in hand, and yet no effects of it visible
anywhere. The chickens, like members of the family, stalked about the
room, too much humanized to roast well. They stood and looked in my eye
or pecked at my shoe. He told me his story, how hard he worked bogging
for a neighbor, at ten dollars an acre and the use of the land with
manure for one year, and the little broad-faced son worked cheerfully
at his father's side the while, not knowing, alas! how poor a bargain
he had made. Living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic; failing to
live.

"Do you ever fish?" said I. "Oh yes, I catch a mess when I am lying
by; good perch I catch." "What's your bait?" "I catch shiners with
fishworms, and bait the perch with them." "You'd better go now, John,"
said his wife, with glistening, hopeful face. But poor John Field
disturbed but a couple of fins, while I was catching a fair string,
and he said it was his luck; and when he changed seats luck changed
seats too. Thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this
primitive new country, _e. g._ to catch perch with shiners.[411]

* * * * *

I find an instinct in me conducting to a mystic spiritual life, and also
another to a primitive savage life.

* * * * *

Toward evening, as the world waxes darker, I am permitted to see the
woodchuck stealing across my path, and tempted to seize and devour it.
The wildest, most desolate scenes are strangely familiar to me.[412]

* * * * *

Why not live a hard and emphatic life, not to be avoided, full of
adventures and work, learn much in it, travel much, though it be only in
these woods? I sometimes walk across a field with unexpected expansion
and long-missed content, as if there were a field worthy of me. The
usual daily boundaries of life are dispersed, and I see in what field
I stand.

When on my way this afternoon, Shall I go down this long hill in the
rain to fish in the pond? I ask myself. And I say to myself: Yes, roam
far, grasp life and conquer it, learn much and live. Your fetters are
knocked off; you are really free. Stay till late in the night; be unwise
and daring. See many men far and near, in their fields and cottages
before the sun sets, though as if many more were to be seen. And yet
each _rencontre_ shall be so satisfactory and simple that no other shall
seem possible. Do not repose every night as villagers do. The noble life
is continuous and unintermitting. At least, live with a longer radius.
Men come home at night only from the next field or street, where their
household echoes haunt, and their life pines and is sickly because
it breathes its own breath. Their shadows morning and evening reach
farther than their daily steps. But come home from far, from ventures
and perils, from enterprise and discovery and crusading, with faith
and experience and character.[413] Do not rest much. Dismiss prudence,
fear, conformity. Remember only what is promised. Make the day light
you, and the night hold a candle, though you be falling from heaven to
earth "from morn to dewy eve a summer's day."

For Vulcan's fall occupied a day, but our highest aspirations and
performances fill but the interstices of time.

* * * * *

Are we not reminded in our better moments that we have been needlessly
husbanding somewhat, perchance our little God-derived capital, or
title to capital, guarding it by methods we know? But the most diffuse
prodigality a better wisdom teaches,—that we _hold_ nothing. We are not
what we were. By usurers' craft, by Jewish methods, we strive to retain
and increase the divinity in us, when infinitely the greater part of
divinity is out of us.

* * * * *

Most men have forgotten that it was ever morning; but a few serene
memories, healthy and wakeful natures, there are who assure us that the
sun rose clear, heralded by the singing of birds,—this very day's sun,
which rose before Memnon was ready to greet it.

* * * * *

In all the dissertations on language, men forget the language that
is, that is really universal, the inexpressible meaning that is in all
things and everywhere, with which the morning and evening teem. As if
language were especially of the tongue of course. With a more copious
learning or understanding of what is published, the present _languages_,
and all that they express, will be forgotten.

* * * * *

The rays which streamed through the crevices will be no more remembered
when the shadow is wholly removed.

* * * * *

Left house on account of plastering, Wednesday, November 12th, at night;
returned Saturday, December 6th.[414]

* * * * *

Though the race is not so degenerated but a man might possibly live
in a cave to-day and keep himself warm by furs, yet, as caves and wild
beasts are not plenty enough to accommodate all at the present day, it
were certainly better to accept the advantages which the invention and
industry of mankind offer. In thickly settled civilized communities,
boards and shingles, lime and brick, are cheaper and more easily come by
than suitable caves, or the whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantity,
or even well-tempered clay or flat stones.[415] A tolerable house for
a rude and hardy race that lived much out of doors was once made here
without any of these last materials. According to the testimony of the
first settlers of Boston, an Indian wigwam was as comfortable in winter
as an English house with all its wainscotting, and they had advanced so
far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the
hole in the roof, which was moved by a string. Such a lodge was, in the
first instance, constructed in a day or two and taken down and put up
again in a few hours, and every family had one.[416]

* * * * *

Thus, to try our civilization by a fair test, in the ruder states of
society every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient
for its ruder and simpler wants; but in modern civilized society, though
the birds of the air have their nests, and woodchucks and foxes their
holes, though each one is commonly the owner of his coat and hat though
never so poor, yet not more than one man in a thousand owns a shelter,
but the nine hundred and ninety-nine pay an annual tax for this outside
garment of all, indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a
village of Indian wigwams and contributes to keep them poor as long
as they live. But, answers one, by simply paying this annual tax the
poorest man secures an abode which is a palace compared to the Indian's.
An annual rent of from twenty to sixty or seventy dollars entitles him
to the benefit of all the improvements of centuries,—Rumford fireplace,
back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, etc.,
etc.[417] But while civilization has been improving our houses, she has
not equally improved the men who should occupy them. She has created
palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. The mason
who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night, perchance, to
a hut no better than a wigwam.[418] If she claims to have made a real
advance in the welfare of man, she must show how she has produced better
dwellings without making them more costly. And the cost of a thing, it
will be remembered, is the amount of life it requires to be exchanged
for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house costs perhaps
from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, and to earn this sum will
require from fifteen to twenty years of the day laborer's life, even
if he is not incumbered with a family; so that he must spend more than
half his life before a wigwam can be earned; and if we suppose he pays
a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage
have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?[419]

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, for instance, who
are at least as well off as the other classes, what are they about? For
the most part I find that they have been toiling ten, twenty, or thirty
years to pay for their farms, and we may set down one half of that toil
to the cost of their houses; and commonly they have not yet paid for
them.[420] This is the reason they are poor; and for similar reasons we
are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded
by luxuries.[421]

* * * * *

But most men do not know what a house is, and the mass are actually
poor all their days because they think they must have such an one as
their neighbor's. As if one were to wear any sort of coat the tailor
might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat and cap
of woodchuck-skin, should complain of hard times because he could not
buy him a crown![422]

* * * * *

It reflects no little dignity on Nature, the fact that the Romans once
inhabited her,—that from this same unaltered hill, forsooth, the Roman
once looked out upon the sea, as from a signal station. The vestiges of
military roads, of houses and tessellated courts and baths,—Nature need
not be ashamed of these relics of her children. The hero's cairn,—one
doubts at length whether his relations or Nature herself raised the
hill. The whole earth is but a hero's cairn. How often are the Romans
flattered by the historian and antiquary! Their vessels penetrated
into this frith and up that river of some remote isle. Their military
monuments still remain on the hills and under the sod of the valleys.
The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters
in every quarter of the old world, and but to-day a new coin is dug up
whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some "Judæa Capta,"
with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and
demonstration puts at rest whole pages of history.[423]

The Earth

Which seems so barren once gave birth
To heroes, who o'erran her plains,
Who plowed her seas and reaped her grains.

Some make the mythology of the Greeks to have been borrowed from that of
the Hebrews, which however is not to be proved by analogies,—the story
of Jupiter dethroning his father Saturn, for instance, from the conduct
of Cham towards his father Noah, and the division of the world among
the three brothers. But the Hebrew fable will not bear to be compared
with the Grecian. The latter is infinitely more sublime and divine. The
one is a history of mortals, the other a history of gods and heroes,
therefore not so ancient. The one god of the Hebrews is not so much of
a gentleman, not so gracious and divine, not so flexible and catholic,
does not exert so intimate an influence on nature as many a one of the
Greeks. He is not less human, though more absolute and unapproachable.
The Grecian were youthful and living gods, but still of godlike or
divine race, and had the virtues of gods. The Hebrew had not all of
the divinity that is in man, no real love for man, but an inflexible
justice. The attribute of the one god has been infinite power, not
grace, not humanity, nor love even,—wholly masculine, with no sister
Juno, no Apollo, no Venus in him. I might say that the one god was not
yet apotheosized, not yet become the current material of poetry.[424]

* * * * *

The wisdom of some of those Greek fables is remarkable. The god Apollo
(Wisdom, Wit, Poetry) condemned to serve, keep the sheep of _King_
Admetus. So is poetry allied to the state.

* * * * *

To Æacus, Minos, Rhadamanthus, judges in hell, only naked men came to
be judged. As Alexander Ross comments, "In this world we must not look
for Justice; when we are stript of all, then shall we have it. For here
something will be found about us that shall corrupt the Judge." When the
island of Ægina was depopulated by sickness at the instance of Æacus,
Jupiter turned the ants into men, _i. e._ made men of the inhabitants
who lived meanly like ants.[425]

* * * * *

The hidden significance of these fables which has been detected, the
ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, is not so remarkable
as the readiness with which they may be made to express any truth.
They are the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than
any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is
like striving to make the sun and the wind and the sea signify. What
signifies it?[426]

* * * * *

Piety, that carries its father on its shoulders.[427]

* * * * *

Music was of three kinds,—mournful, martial, and effeminate,—Lydian,
Doric, and Phrygian. Its inventors Amphion, Thamyris, and Marsyas.
Amphion was bred by shepherds. He caused the stones to follow him and
built the walls of Thebes by his music. All orderly and harmonious or
beautiful structures may be said to be raised to a slow music.

Harmony was begotten of Mars and Venus.

* * * * *

Antæus was the son of Neptune and the Earth. All physical bulk and
strength is of the earth and mortal. When it loses this _point d'appui_
it is weakness; it cannot soar. And so, _vice versa_, you can interpret
this fable to the credit of the earth.

* * * * *

They all provoked or challenged the gods,—Amphion, Apollo and Diana,
and was killed by them; Thamyris, the Muses, who conquered him in music,
took away his eyesight and melodious voice, and broke his lyre. Marsyas
took up the flute which Minerva threw away, challenged Apollo, was
flayed alive by him, and his death mourned by Fauns, Satyrs, and Dryads,
whose tears produced the river which bears his name.

* * * * *

The fable which is truly and naturally composed, so as to please the
imagination of a child, harmonious though strange like a wild-flower,
is to the wise man an apothegm and admits his wisest interpretation.

When we read that Bacchus made the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so that they
leaped into the sea, mistaking it for "a meadow full of flowers," and
so became dolphins, we are not concerned about the historical truth of
this, but rather a higher, poetical truth. We seem to hear the music of
a thought, and care not if our intellect be not gratified.[428]

* * * * *

The mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, the world's
inheritance, still reflecting some of their original hues, like the
fragments of clouds tinted by the departed sun, the wreck of poems,
a retrospect as [of] the loftiest fames,—what survives of oldest
fame,—some fragment will still float into the latest summer day and
ally this hour to the morning of creation. These are the materials and
hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race. How from
the condition of ants it arrived at the condition of men, how arts
were invented gradually,—let a thousand surmises shed some light on
this story. We will not be confined by historical, even geological,
periods, which would allow us to doubt of a progress in human events.
If we rise above this wisdom for the day, we shall expect that
this morning of the race, in which they have been supplied with the
simplest necessaries,—with corn and wine and honey and oil and fire and
articulate speech and agricultural and other arts,—reared up by degrees
from the condition of ants to men, will be succeeded by a day of equally
progressive splendor; that, in the lapse of the divine periods, other
divine agents and godlike men will assist to elevate the race as much
above its present condition.

* * * * *

Aristæus "found out honey and oil." "He obtained of Jupiter and Neptune,
that the pestilential heat of the dog-days, wherein was great mortality,
should be mitigated with wind."[429]

_Dec. 12. Friday._ The pond skimmed over on the night of this day,
excepting a strip from the bar to the northwest shore. Flint's Pond has
been frozen for some time.[430]

_Dec. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20._ Pond _quite free_ from ice, not yet having
been frozen quite over.

_Dec. 23. Tuesday._ The pond froze over last night entirely for the
first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon.[431]

* * * * *

I wish to say something to-night not of and concerning the Chinese and
Sandwich-Islanders, but _to_ and concerning you who hear me, who are
said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially
your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town;
what it is, whether it is necessarily as bad as it is, whether it can't
be improved as well as not.[432]

It is generally admitted that some of you are poor, find it hard to get
a living, haven't always something in your pockets, haven't paid for all
the dinners you've actually eaten, or all your coats and shoes, some
of which are already worn out. All this is very well known to all by
hearsay and by experience. It is very evident what a mean and sneaking
life you live, always in the hampers, always on the limits, trying to
get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough,
called by the Latins _aes alienum_, another's brass,—some of their
coins being made of brass,—and still so many living and dying and buried
to-day by another's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay,
with interest, to-morrow perhaps, and die to-day, insolvent; seeking
to curry favor, to get custom, lying, flattering, voting, contracting
yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into a world of thin
and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you
make his [shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, etc.].[433]

* * * * *

There is a civilization going on among brutes as well as men. Foxes
are forest dogs. I hear one barking raggedly, wildly, demoniacally in
the darkness to-night, seeking expression, laboring with some anxiety,
striving to be a dog outright that he may carelessly run in the
street, struggling for light. He is but a faint man, before pygmies; an
imperfect, burrowing man. He has come up near to my window, attracted
by the light, and barked a vulpine curse at me, then retreated.[434]

* * * * *

Reading suggested by Hallam's History of Literature.

1. "Abelard and Heloise."

2. Look at Luigi Pulci. His "Morgante Maggiore," published in 1481,
"was to the poetical romances of chivalry what Don Quixote was to their
brethren in prose."

3. Leonardo da Vinci. The most remarkable of his writings still in
manuscript. For his universality of genius, "the first name of the
fifteenth century."

4. Read Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato," published between 1491 and 1500,
for its influence on Ariosto and its intrinsic merits. Its sounding
names repeated by Milton in "Paradise Regained."

* * * * *

Landor's works are:—

A small volume of poems, 1793, out of print.

Poems of "Gebir," "Chrysaor," the "Phoceans," etc. The "Gebir" eulogized
by Southey and Coleridge.

Wrote verses in Italian and Latin.

The dramas "Andrea of Hungary," "Giovanna of Naples," and "Fra Rupert."

"Pericles and Aspasia."

"Poems from the Arabic and Persian," 1800, pretending to be translations.

"A Satire upon Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors," printed 1836,
not published.

Letters called "High and Low Life in Italy."

"Imaginary Conversations."

"Pentameron and Pentalogia."

"Examination of William Shakspeare before Sir Thomas Lucy, Knt.,
touching Deer-stealing."

* * * * *

_Vide_ again Richard's sail in "Richard First and the Abbot."[435]

Phocion's remarks in conclusion of "Eschines and Phocion."

"Demosthenes and Eubulides."

In Milton and Marvel, speaking of the Greek poets, he says, "There is a
sort of refreshing odor flying off it perpetually; not enough to oppress
or to satiate; nothing is beaten or bruised; nothing smells of the
stalk; the flower itself is half-concealed by the Genius of it hovering
round."

Pericles and Sophocles.

Marcus Tullius Cicero and his brother Quintus. In this a sentence on
Sleep and Death.

Johnson and Tooke, for a criticism on words.

* * * * *

It is worth the while to have lived a primitive wilderness life at
some time, to know what are, after all, the necessaries of life and
what methods society has taken to supply them. I have looked over the
old day-books of the merchants with the same view,—to see what it was
shopmen bought. They are the grossest groceries.[436] Salt is perhaps
the most important article in such a list, and most commonly bought at
the stores, of articles commonly thought to be necessaries,—salt, sugar,
molasses, cloth, etc.,—by the farmer. You will see why stores or shops
exist, not to furnish tea and coffee, but salt, etc. Here's the rub,
then.

I see how I could supply myself with every other article which I need,
without using the shops, and to obtain this might be the fit occasion
for a visit to the seashore. Yet even salt cannot strictly speaking be
called a necessary of human life, since many tribes do not use it.

* * * * *

"Have you seen my hound, sir? I want to know!—what! a lawyer's office?
law books?—if you've seen anything of a hound about here. Why, what do
you do here?" "I live here. No, I haven't." "Haven't you heard one in
the woods anywhere?" "Oh, yes, I heard one this evening." "What do you
do here?" "But he was some way off." "Which side did he seem to be?"
"Well, I should think he [was] the other side of the pond." "This is a
large dog; makes a large track. He's been out hunting from Lexington for
a week. How long have you lived here?" "Oh, about a year." "Somebody
said there was a man up here had a camp in the woods somewhere, and
he'd got him." "Well, I don't know of anybody. There's Britton's camp
over on the other road. It may be there." "Isn't there anybody in these
woods?" "Yes, they are chopping right up here behind me." "How far is
it?" "Only a few steps. Hark a moment. There, don't you hear the sound
of their axes?"[437]

* * * * *

Therien, the woodchopper, was here yesterday, and while I was cutting
wood, some chickadees hopped near pecking the bark and chips and the
potato-skins I had thrown out. "What do you call them," he asked. I told
him.

"What do _you_ call them," asked I. "_Mezezence_[?]," I think he said.
"When I eat my dinner in the woods," said he, "sitting very still,
having kindled a fire to warm my coffee, they come and light on my arm
and peck at the potato in my fingers. I like to have the little fellers
about me."[438] Just then one flew up from the snow and perched on the
wood I was holding in my arms, and pecked it, and looked me familiarly
in the face. _Chicadee-dee-dee-dee-dee_, while others were whistling
phebe,—_phe-bee_,—in the woods behind the house.[439]

_March 26, 1846._ The change from foul weather to fair, from dark,
sluggish hours to serene, elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all
things proclaim. The change from foulness to serenity is instantaneous.
Suddenly an influx of light, though it was late, filled my room. I
looked out and saw that the pond was already calm and full of hope as
on a summer evening, though the ice was dissolved but yesterday. There
seemed to be some intelligence in the pond which responded to the unseen
serenity in a distant horizon. I heard a robin in the distance,—the
first I had heard this spring,—repeating the assurance. The green pitch
[pine] suddenly looked brighter and more erect, as if now entirely
washed and cleansed by the rain. I knew it would not rain any more. A
serene summer-evening sky seemed darkly reflected in the pond, though
the clear sky was nowhere visible overhead. It was no longer the end
of a season, but the beginning. The pines and shrub oaks, which had
before drooped and cowered the winter through with myself, now recovered
their several characters and in the landscape revived the expression
of an immortal beauty. Trees seemed all at once to be fitly grouped,
to sustain new relations to men and to one another. There was somewhat
cosmical in the arrangement of nature. O the evening robin, at the close
of a New England day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! Where
does the minstrel really roost? We perceive it is not the bird of the
ornithologist that is heard,—the _Turdus migratorius_.

The signs of fair weather are seen in the bosom of ponds before they are
recognized in the heavens. It is easy to tell by looking at any twig of
the forest whether its winter is past or not.[440]

We forget how the sun looks on our fields, as on the forests and the
prairies, as they reflect or absorb his rays. It matters not whether we
stand in Italy or on the prairies of the West, in the eye of the sun the
earth is all equally cultivated like a garden, and yields to the wave
of an irresistible civilization.

This broad field, which I have looked on so long, looks not to me as
the farmer, looks away from me to the sun, and attends to the harmony of
nature. These beans have results which are not harvested in the autumn
of the year. They do not mind, if I harvest them, who waters and makes
them grow? Our grain-fields make part of a beautiful picture which the
sun beholds in his daily course, and it matters little comparatively
whether they fill the barns of the husbandman. The true husbandman will
cease from anxiety and labor with every day, and relinquish all claim
to the produce of his fields.[441]

The avaricious man would fain plant by himself.

A flock of geese has just got in late, now in the dark flying low
over the pond. They came on, indulging at last like weary travellers
in complaint and consolation, or like some creaking evening mail late
lumbering in with regular anserine clangor. I stood at my door and could
hear their wings when they suddenly spied my light and, ceasing their
noise, wheeled to the east and apparently settled in the pond.[442]

_March 27._ This morning I saw the geese from the door through the mist
sailing about in the middle of the pond, but when I went to the shore
they rose and circled round like ducks over my head, so that I counted
them,—twenty-nine. I after saw thirteen ducks.[443]

VIII

1845-1847

(ÆT. 27-30)

[The small and much mutilated journal which begins here appears to
belong to the Walden period (1845-47), but the entries are undated.]

THE HERO[444]

What doth he ask?
Some worthy task,
Never to run
Till that be done,
That never done
Under the sun.
Here to begin
All things to win
By his endeavor
Forever and ever.
Happy and well
On this ground to dwell,
This soil subdue,
Plant, and renew.
By might and main
Health and strength gain,
So to give nerve
To his slenderness;
Yet some mighty pain
He would sustain,
So to preserve
His tenderness.
Not be deceived,
Of suff'ring bereaved,
Not lose his life
By living too well,
Nor escape strife
In his lonely cell,
And so find out heaven
By not knowing hell.
Strength like the rock
To withstand any shock,
Yet some Aaron's rod,
Some smiting by God,
Occasion to gain
To shed human tears
And to entertain
Still demonic fears.
Not once for all, forever, blest,
Still to be cheered out of the west;
Not from his heart to banish all sighs;
Still be encouraged by the sunrise;
Forever to love and to love and to love,
Within him, around him, beneath him, above.
To love is to know, is to feel, is to be;
At once 'tis his birth and his destiny.
Having sold all,
Something would get,
Furnish his stall
With better yet,—
For earthly pleasures
Celestial pains,
Heavenly losses
For earthly gains.
Still to begin—unheard-of sin
A fallen angel—a risen man
Never returns to where he began.
Some childlike labor
Here to perform,
Some baby-house
To keep out the storm,
And make the sun laugh
While he doth warm,
And the moon cry
To think of her youth,
The months gone by,
And wintering truth.

How long to morning?
Can any tell?
How long since the warning
On our ears fell?
The bridegroom cometh
Know we not well?
Are we not ready,
Our packet made,
Our hearts steady,
Last words said?
Must we still eat
The bread we have spurned?
Must we rekindle
The faggots we've burned?
Must we go out
By the poor man's gate?
Die by degrees,
Not by new fate?
Is there no road
This way, my friend?
Is there no road
Without any end?
Have you not seen
In ancient times
Pilgrims go by here
Toward other climes,
With shining faces
Youthful and strong
Mounting this hill
With speech and with song?
Oh, my good sir,
I know not the ways;
Little my knowledge,
Though many my days.
When I have slumbered,
I have heard sounds
As travellers passing
Over my grounds.
'Twas a sweet music
Wafted them by;
I could not tell
If far off or nigh.
Unless I dreamed it,
This was of yore,
But I never told it
To mortal before;
Never remembered
But in my dreams
What to me waking
A miracle seems.
If you will give of your pulse or your grain,
We will rekindle those flames again.
Here will we tarry, still without doubt,
Till a miracle putteth that fire out.

* * * * *

At midnight's hour I raised my head.
The owls were seeking for their bread;
The foxes barked, impatient still
At their wan [?] fate they bear so ill.
I thought me of eternities delayed
And of commands but half obeyed.
The night wind rustled through the glade,
As if a force of men there staid;
The word was whispered through the ranks,
And every hero seized his lance.
The word was whispered through the ranks,
Advance!

To live to a good old age such as the ancients reached, serene and
contented, dignifying the life of man, leading a simple, epic country
life in these days of confusion and turmoil,—that is what Wordsworth
has done. Retaining the tastes and the innocence of his youth. There is
more wonderful talent, but nothing so cheering and world-famous as this.

The life of man would seem to be going all to wrack and pieces, and no
instance of permanence and the ancient natural health, notwithstanding
Burns, and Coleridge, and Carlyle. It will not do for men to die young;
the greatest genius does not die young. Whom the gods love most do
indeed die young, but not till their life is matured, and their years
are like those of the oak, for they are the products half of nature and
half of God. What should nature do without old men, not children but
men?

The life of men, not to become a mockery and a jest, should last a
respectable term of years. We cannot spare the age of those old Greek
Philosophers. They live long who do not live for a near end, who still
forever look to the immeasurable future for their manhood.

* * * * *

All dramas have but one scene. There is but one stage for the peasant
and for the actor, and both on the farm and in the theatre the curtain
rises to reveal the same majestic scenery. The globe of earth is poised
in space for his stage under the foundations of the theatre, and the
cope of heaven, out of reach of the scene-shifter, overarches it. It
is always to be remembered by the critic that all actions are to be
regarded at last as performed from a distance upon some rood of earth
and amid the operations of nature.

Rabelais, too, inhabited the soil of France in sunshine and shade in
those years; and his life was no "farce" after all.

I seek the present time,
No other clime,
Life in to-day,—
Not to sail another way,—
To Paris or to Rome,
Or farther still from home.
That man, whoe'er he is,
Lives but a moral death
Whose life is not coeval
With his breath.
My feet forever stand
On Concord fields,
And I must live the life
Which their soil yields.
What are deeds done
Away from home?
What the best essay
On the Ruins of Rome?
The love of the new,
The unfathomed blue,
The wind in the wood,
All future good,
The sunlit tree,
The small chickadee,
The dusty highways,
What Scripture says,
This pleasant weather,
And all else together,
The river's meander,
All things, in short,
Forbid me to wander
In deed or in thought.
In cold or in drouth,
Not seek the sunny South,
But make my whole tour
In the sunny present hour.

For here if thou fail,
Where can'st thou prevail?
If you love not
Your own land most,
You'll find nothing lovely
On a distant coast.
If you love not
The latest sunset,
What is there in pictures
Or old gems set?
If no man should travel
Till he had the means,
There'd be little travelling
For kings or for queens.
The means, what are they?
They are the wherewithal
Great expenses to pay,
Life got, and some to spare,
Great works on hand,
And freedom from care,
Plenty of time well spent
To use,
Clothes paid for and no rent
In your shoes,
Something to eat

And something to burn,
And above all no need to return.
Then they who come back,
Say, have they not failed,
Wherever they've ridden,
Or steamed it, or sailed?

All your grass hay'd,
All your debts paid,
All your wills made;
Then you might as well have stay'd,
For are you not dead,
Only not buried?

The way unto "to-day,"
The railroad to "here,"
They never'll grade that way
Nor shorten it, I fear.
There are plenty of depots
All the world o'er,
But not a single station
At a man's door.
If he would get near
To the secret of things,
He'll not have to hear
When the engine bell rings.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without
exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do
we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we often recognize
ourselves for the actual men we are? The lightning is an exaggeration
of light. We live by exaggeration. Exaggerated history is poetry, and
is truth referred to a new standard. To a small man every greater one
is an exaggeration. No truth was ever expressed but with this sort of
emphasis, so that for the time there was no other truth. The value of
what is really valuable can never be exaggerated. You must speak loud to
those who are hard of hearing; so you acquire a habit of speaking loud
to those who are not. In order to appreciate any, even the humblest,
man, you must not only understand, but you must first love him; and
there never was such an exaggerator as love. Who are we? Are we not all
of us great men? And yet what [are] we actually? Nothing, certainly, to
speak of. By an immense exaggeration we appreciate our Greek poetry and
philosophy, Egyptian ruins, our Shakespeares and Miltons, our liberty
and Christianity. We give importance to this hour over all other hours.
We do not live by justice, but [by grace.][445]

* * * * *

Love never perjures itself, nor is it mistaken.

* * * * *

He is not the great writer, who is afraid to let the world know that he
ever committed an impropriety. Does it not know that all men are mortal?

* * * * *

Carlyle told R. W. E. that he first discovered that he was not a jackass
on reading "Tristram Shandy" and Rousseau's "Confessions," especially
the last. His first essay is an article in _Fraser's Magazine_ on two
boys quarrelling.

* * * * *

Youth wants something to look up to, to look forward to; as the little
boy who inquired of me the other day, "How long do those old-agers
live?" and expressed the intention of compassing two hundred summers at
least. The old man who cobbles shoes without glasses at a hundred, and
cuts a handsome swath at a hundred and five, is indispensable to give
dignity and respectability to our life.

* * * * *

From all points of the compass, from the earth beneath and the heavens
above, have come these inspirations and been entered duly in the order
of their arrival in the journal. Thereafter, when the time arrived, they
were winnowed into lectures, and again, in due time, from lectures into
essays. And at last they stand, like the cubes of Pythagoras, firmly on
either basis; like statues on their pedestals, but the statues rarely
take hold of hands. There is only such connection and series as is
attainable in the galleries. And this affects their immediate practical
and popular influence.

* * * * *

Carlyle, we should say, more conspicuously than any other, though with
little enough expressed or even conscious sympathy, represents the
Reformer class. In him the universal plaint is most settled and serious.
Until the thousand named and nameless grievances are righted, there will
be no repose for him in the lap of Nature or the seclusion of science
and literature. And all the more for not being the visible acknowledged
leader of any class.[446]

* * * * *

All places, all positions—all things in short—are a medium happy or
unhappy. Every realm has its centre, and the nearer to that the better
while you are in it. Even health is only the happiest of all mediums.
There may be excess, or there may be deficiency; in either case there
is disease. A man must only be _virtuous_ enough.

* * * * *

I had one neighbor within half a mile for a short time when I first
went to the woods, Hugh Quoil, an Irishman who had been a soldier at
Waterloo, Colonel Quoil, as he was called,—I believe that he had killed
a colonel and ridden off his horse,—who lived from hand—sometimes to
mouth,—though it was commonly a glass of rum that the hand carried. He
and his wife awaited their fate together in an old ruin in Walden woods.
What life he got—or what means of death—he got by ditching.

I never was much acquainted with Hugh Quoil, though sometimes I met him
in the path, and now do believe that a solid shank-bone, and skull which
no longer aches, lie somewhere, and can still be produced, which once
with garment of flesh and broadcloth were called and hired to do work
as Hugh Quoil. He was a man of manners and gentlemanlike, as one who
had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could
well attend to. At a distance he had seemingly a ruddy face as of biting
January, but nearer at hand it was bright carmine. It would have burnt
your finger to touch his cheek. He wore a straight-bodied snuff-colored
coat which had long been familiar with him, and carried a turf-knife in
his hand—instead of a sword. He had fought on the English side before,
but he fought on the Napoleon side now. Napoleon went to St. Helena;
Hugh Quoil came to Walden Pond. I heard that he used to tell travellers
who inquired about myself that —— and Thoreau owned the _farm_ together,
but Thoreau lived on the _place_ and carried it on.[447]

He was thirstier than I, and drank more, probably, but not out of
the pond. That was never the lower for him. Perhaps I ate more than
he. The last time I met him, the only time I spoke with him, was at
the foot of the hill on the highway as I was crossing to the spring
one summer afternoon, the pond water being too warm for me. I was
crossing the road with a pail in my hand, when Quoil came down the
hill, wearing his snuff-colored coat, as if it were winter, and shaking
with delirium-tremens. I hailed him and told him that my errand was to
get water at a spring close by, only at the foot of the hill over the
fence. He answered, with stuttering and parched lips, bloodshot eye,
and staggering gesture, he'd like to see it. "Follow me there, then."
But I had got my pail full and back before he scaled the fence. And he,
drawing his coat about him, to warm him, or to cool him, answered in
delirium-tremens, hydrophobia dialect, which is not easy to be written
here, he'd heard of it, but had never seen it; and so shivered his way
along to town,—to liquor and to oblivion.

On Sundays, brother Irishmen and others, who had gone far astray
from steady habits and the village, crossed my bean-field with empty
jugs toward Quoil's. But what for? Did they sell rum there? I asked.
"Respectable people they," "Know no harm of them," "Never heard that
they drank too much," was the answer of all wayfarers. They went by
sober, stealthy, silent, skulking (no harm to get elm bark Sundays);
returned loquacious, sociable, having long intended to call on you.

At length one afternoon Hugh Quoil, feeling better, perchance, with
snuff-colored coat, as usual, paced solitary and soldier-like, thinking
[of] Waterloo, along the woodland road to the foot of the hill by
the spring; and there the Fates met him, and threw him down in his
snuff-colored coat on the gravel, and got ready to cut his thread;
but not till travellers passed, who would raise him up, get him
perpendicular, then settle, settle quick; but legs, what are they? "Lay
me down," says Hugh hoarsely. "House locked up—key—in pocket—wife in
town." And the Fates cut, and there he lay by the wayside, five feet
ten, and looking taller than in life.

He has gone away; his house here "all tore to pieces." What kind of
fighting or ditching work he finds to do now, how it fares with him,
whether his thirst is quenched, whether there is still some semblance of
that carmine cheek, struggles still with some liquid demon—perchance on
more equal terms—till he swallow him completely, I cannot by any means
learn. What his salutation is now, what his January-morning face, what
he thinks of Waterloo, what start he has gained or lost, what work still
for the ditcher and forester and soldier now, there is no evidence. He
was here, the likes of him, for a season, standing light in his shoes
like a faded gentleman, with gesture almost learned in drawing-rooms;
wore clothes, hat, shoes, cut ditches, felled wood, did farm work for
various people, kindled fires, worked enough, ate enough, drank too
much. He was one of those unnamed, countless sects of philosophers who
founded no school.

Now that he was gone, and his wife was gone too,—for she could not
support the solitude,—before it was too late and the house was torn
down, I went over to make a call. Now that Irishmen with jugs avoided
the old house, I visited it,—an "unlucky castle now," said they. There
lay his old clothes curled up by habit, as if it were himself, upon his
raised plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth; and scattered about
were soiled cards—king of diamonds, hearts, spades—on the floor. One
black chicken, which they could not catch, still went to roost in the
next apartment, stepping silent over the floor, frightened by the sound
of its own wings, black as night and as silent, too, not even croaking;
awaiting Reynard, its god actually dead. There was the dim outline of a
garden which had been planted, but had never received its first hoeing,
now overrun with weeds, with burs and cockles, which stick to your
clothes; as if in the spring he had contemplated a harvest of corn and
beans before that strange trembling of the limbs overtook him. Skin of
woodchuck fresh-stretched, never to be cured, met once in bean-field by
the Waterloo man with uplifted hoe; no cap, no mittens wanted. Pipe on
hearth no more to be lighted, best buried with him.[448]

* * * * *

No thirst for glory, only for strong drink.

* * * * *

Only the convalescent are conscious of the health of nature.

* * * * *

In case of an embargo there will be found to be old clothes enough in
everybody's garret to last till the millennium. We are fond of news,
novelties, new things. The bank-bill that is torn in two will pass if
you save the pieces, if you have only got the essential piece with the
signatures. Lowell and Manchester and Fall River think you will let go
their broadcloth currency when it is torn; but hold on, have an eye to
the signature about the back of it, and endorse the man's name from whom
you received it, and they will be the first to fail and find nothing at
all in their garrets. Every day our garments become more assimilated to
the man that wears them, more near and dear to us, and not finally to
be laid aside but with such delay and medical appliance and solemnity
as our other mortal coil.[449] We know, after all, but few men, a great
many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow with your last shift, you
standing shiftless by, who would not soonest address the scarecrow and
salute it?[450]

King James loved his old shoes best. Who does not? Indeed these new
clothes are often won and worn only after a most painful birth. At
first movable prisons, oyster-shells which the tide only raises, opens,
and shuts, washing in what scanty nutriment may be afloat. How many
men walk over the limits, carrying their limits with them? In the
stocks they stand, not without gaze of multitudes, only without rotten
eggs, in torturing boots, the last wedge but one driven. Why should
we be startled at death? Life is constant putting off of the mortal
coil,—coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes.

Not till the prisoner has got some rents in his prison walls,
possibility of egress without lock and key some day,—result of steel
watch-spring rubbing on iron grate, or whatever friction and wear and
tear,—will he rest contented in his prison.

Clothes brought in sewing, a kind of work you may call endless.[451]

A man who has at length found out something important to do will not
have to get a new suit to do it in. For him the old will do, lying
dusty in the garret for an indefinite period. Old shoes will serve a
hero longer than they have served his valet. Bare feet are the oldest
of shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to legislature
and soirées,—they must have new coats, coats to turn as often as the
man turns in them. Who ever saw his old shoes, his old coat, actually
worn out, returned to their original elements, so that it was not [a]
deed [of] charity to bestow them on some poorer boy, and by him to be
bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say on some richer who can
do with less?[452]

* * * * *

Over eastward of my bean-field lived Cato Ingraham, slave, born slave,
perhaps, of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village,
who built him a house and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods,
for which no doubt he was thanked; and then, on the northeast corner,
Zilpha, colored woman of fame; and down the road, on the right hand,
Brister, colored man, on Brister's Hill, where grow still those little
wild apples he tended, now large trees, but still wild and ciderish
to my taste; and farther still you come to Breed's location, and again
on the left, by well and roadside, Nutting lived. Farther up the road,
at the pond's end, Wyman, the potter, who furnished his townsmen with
earthenware,—the squatter.[453]

Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of most of these human
dwellings; sometimes the well-dent where a spring oozed, now dry and
tearless grass, or covered deep,—not to be discovered till late days by
accident,—with a flat stone under the sod. These dents, like deserted
fox-burrows, old holes, where once was the stir and bustle of human life
overhead, and man's destiny, "fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,"
were all by turns discussed.

Still grows the vivacious lilac for a generation after the last vestige
else is gone, unfolding still its early sweet-scented blossoms in the
spring, to be plucked only by the musing traveller; planted, tended,
weeded [?], watered by children's hands in front-yard plot,—now by
wall-side in retired pasture, or giving place to a new rising forest.
The last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little did
the dark children think that that weak slip with its two eyes which
they watered would root itself so, and outlive them, and house in
the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and field, and tell
their story to the retired wanderer a half-century after they were no
more,—blossoming as fair, smelling as sweet, as in that first spring.
Its still cheerful, tender, civil lilac colors.[454]

The woodland road, though once more dark and shut in by the forest,
resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and was notched
and dotted here and there with their little dwellings. Though now but
a humble rapid passage to neighboring villages or for the woodman's
team, it once delayed the traveller longer, and was a lesser village in
itself.[455]

You still hear from time to time the whinnering of the raccoon, still
living as of old in hollow trees, washing its food before it eats it.
The red fox barks at night. The loon comes in the fall to sail and
bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with its wild laughter in the
early morning, at rumor of whose arrival all Concord sportsmen are
on the alert, in gigs, on foot, two by two, three [by three], with
patent rifles, patches, conical balls, spy-glass or open hole over
the barrel. They seem already to hear the loon laugh; come rustling
through the woods like October leaves, these on this side, those on
that, for the poor loon cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here, must
come up somewhere. The October wind rises, rustling the leaves, ruffling
the pond water, so that no loon can be seen rippling the surface. Our
sportsmen scour, sweep the pond with spy-glass in vain, making the
woods ring with rude [?] charges of powder, for the loon went off in
that morning rain with one loud, long, hearty laugh, and our sportsmen
must beat a retreat to town and stable and daily routine, shop work,
unfinished jobs again.[456]

Or in the gray dawn the sleeper hears the long ducking gun explode over
toward Goose Pond, and, hastening to the door, sees the remnant of
a flock, black duck or teal, go whistling by with outstretched neck,
with broken ranks, but in ranger order. And the silent hunter emerges
into the carriage road with ruffled feathers at his belt, from the dark
pond-side where he has lain in his bower since the stars went out.

And for a week you hear the circling clamor, clangor, of some solitary
goose through the fog, seeking its mate, peopling the woods with a
larger life than they can hold.[457]

For hours in fall days you shall watch the ducks cunningly tack and
veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman on the
shore,—tricks they have learned and practiced in far Canada lakes or in
Louisiana bayous.[458]

The waves rise and dash, taking sides with all waterfowl.[459]

* * * * *

Then in dark winter mornings, in short winter afternoons, the pack
of hounds, threading all woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to
resist the instinct of the chase, and note of hunting-horn at intervals,
showing that man too is in the rear. And the woods ring again, and yet
no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, and no following
pack after their Actæon.[460]

* * * * *

But this small village, germ of something more, why did it fail while
Concord grows apace? No natural advantages, no water privilege, only
the deep Walden Pond and cool Brister's Spring,—privileges to drink
long, healthy, pure draughts, alas, all unimproved by those men but
to dilute their glass. Might not the basket-making, stable-broom,
mat-making, corn-parching, potters' business have thrived here, making
the wilderness to blossom as the rose? Now, all too late for commerce,
this waste, depopulated district has its railroad too. And transmitted
the names of unborn Bristers, Catos, Hildas,[461] Zilphas to a remote
and grateful posterity.

Again Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house raised
last spring to be the oldest in the settlement.

The sterile soil would have been proof against any lowland
degeneracy.[462]

Farmers far and near call it the paradise of beans.

And here, too, on winter days, while yet is cold January, and snow and
ice lie thick, comes the prudent, foreseeing landlord or housekeeper
(anticipating thirst) from the village, to get ice to cool his summer
drink,—a grateful beverage if he should live, if time should endure so
long. How few so wise, so industrious, to lay up treasures which neither
rust nor melt, "to cool their summer drink" one day!

And cut off the solid pond, the element and air of fishes, held fast
with chain and stake like corded wood, all through favoring, willing,
kind, permitting winter air to wintery cellar, to underlie the summer
there. And cut and saw the cream of the pond, unroof the house of
fishes.[463]

And in early mornings come men with fishing-reels and slender lunch, men
of real faith, and let down their fine lines and live minnows through
the snowy field to hook the pickerel and perch.[464]

* * * * *

With buried well-stones, and strawberries, raspberries, thimble-berries
growing on the sunny sward there; some pitchy pine or gnarled oak in
the chimney-nook, or the sweet-scented black birch where the doorstone
was.[465]

Breed's,—history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted there. Let time
intervene to assuage and lend an azure atmospheric tint to them.[466]

* * * * *

There is something pathetic in the sedentary life of men who have
travelled. They must naturally die when they leave the road.

What seems so fair and poetic in antiquity—almost fabulous—is realized,
too, in Concord life. As poets and historians brought their work to the
Grecian games, and genius wrestled there as well as strength of body, so
have we seen works of kindred genius read at our Concord games, by their
author, in their own Concord amphitheatre. It is virtually repeated by
all ages and nations.[467]

* * * * *

Moles nesting in your cellar and nibbling every third potato.[468]
A whole rabbit-warren only separated from you by the flooring.
To be saluted when you stir in the dawn by the hasty departure
of Monsieur,—thump, thump, thump, striking his head against the
floor-timbers.[469] Squirrels and field mice that hold to a community
of property in your stock of chestnuts.

The blue jays suffered few chestnuts to reach the ground, resorting to
your single tree in flocks in the early morning, and picking them out
of the burs at a great advantage.

The crop of blackberries small; berries not yet grown. Ground-nuts not
dug.

* * * * *

One wonders how so much, after all, was expressed in the old way, so
much here depends upon the emphasis, tone, pronunciation, style, and
spirit of the reading. No writer uses so profusely all the aids to
intelligibility which the printer's art affords. You wonder how others
had contrived to write so many pages without emphatic, italicized words,
they are so expressive, so natural and indispensable, here. As if none
had ever used the demonstrative pronoun demonstratively. In another's
sentences the thought, though immortal, is, as it were, embalmed and
does not _strike_ you, but here it is so freshly living, not purified
by the ordeal of death, that it stirs in the very extremities, the
smallest particles and pronouns are all alive with it.—You must not
say it, but _it_. It is not simple it, your it or mine, but _it_. His
books are solid, workmanlike, like all that England does. They tell
of endless labor done, well done, and all the rubbish swept away, like
this bright cutlery which glitters in the windows, while the coke and
ashes, turnings, filings, borings, dust lie far away at Birmingham,
unheard of. The words did not come at the command of grammar but of a
tyrannous, inexorable meaning; not like the standing soldiers, by vote
of Parliament, but any able-bodied countryman pressed into the service.
It is no China war, but a revolution. This style is worth attending
to as one of the most important features of the man that we at this
distance know.[470]

* * * * *

What are the men of New England about? I have travelled some in New
England, especially in Concord, and I found that no enterprise was on
foot which it would not disgrace a man to take part in. They seemed to
be employed everywhere in shops and offices and fields. They seemed,
like the Brahmins of the East, to be doing penance in a thousand
curious, unheard-of ways, their endurance surpassing anything I had ever
seen or heard of,—Simeon Stylites, Brahmins looking in the face of the
sun, standing on one leg, dwelling at the roots of trees, nothing to
it; any of the twelve labors of Hercules to be matched,—the Nemean lion,
Lernæan hydra, Œnœan stag, Erymanthian boar, Augean stables, Stymphalian
birds, Cretan bull, Diomedes' mares, Amazonian girdle, monster Geryon,
Hesperian apples, three-headed Cerberus, nothing at all in comparison,
being only twelve and having an end. For I could never see that these
men ever slew or captured any of their monsters, or finished any of
their labors. They have no "friend Iolaus to burn, with a hot iron,
the root" of the hydra's head; for as soon as one head is crushed, two
spring up.[471]

Men labor under a mistake; they are laying up treasures which moth and
rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. Northern Slavery,
or the slavery which includes the Southern, Eastern, Western, and all
others.[472]

It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern
one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver. Look at
the lonely teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night;
is he a son of the morning, with somewhat of divinity in him, fearless
because immortal, going to receive his birthright, greeting the sun as
his fellow, bounding with youthful, gigantic strength over his mother
earth? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely, indefinitely all the
day he fears, not being immortal, not divine, the slave and prisoner of
his own opinion of himself, fame which he has earned by his own deeds.
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with private opinion. What I
think of myself, that determines my fate.[473]

I see young men, my equals, who have inherited from their spiritual
father a soul,—broad, fertile, uncultivated,—from their earthly father
a farm,—with cattle and barns and farming tools, the implements of the
picklock and the counterfeiter. Better if they had been born in the
open pasture and suckled by a wolf, or perhaps cradled in a manger, that
they might have seen with clear eye what was the field they were called
to labor in. The young man has got to live a man's life, then, in this
world, pushing all these things before him, and get on as well as he
can. How many a poor immortal soul I have met, well-nigh crushed and
smothered, creeping slowly down the road of life, pushing before it a
barn seventy-five by forty feet and one hundred acres of land,—tillage,
pasture, wood-lot! This dull, opaque garment of the flesh is load enough
for the strongest spirit, but with such an earthly garment superadded
the spiritual life is soon plowed into the soil for compost. It's a
fool's life, as they will all find when they get to the end of it. The
man that goes on accumulating property when the bare necessaries of life
are cared for is a fool and knows better.[474]

There is a stronger desire to be respectable to one's neighbors than to
one's self.

However, such distinctions as poet, philosopher, literary man, etc., do
not much assist our final estimate. We do not lay much stress on them;
"a man's a man for a' that." Any writer who interests us much is all
and more than these.

It is not simple dictionary it.[475]

Talent at making books solid, workmanlike, graceful, which may be
read.[476]

Some idyllic chapter or chapters are needed.

In the French Revolution are Mirabeau, king of men; Danton, Titan of
the Revolution; Camille Desmoulins, poetic editor; Roland, heroic woman;
Dumouriez, first efficient general: on the other side, Marat, friend of
the people; Robespierre; Tinville, infernal judge; St. Just; etc., etc.

* * * * *

Nutting and Le Gros by the wall-side. The Stratten house and barn where
the orchard covered all the slope of Brister's Hill,—now killed out by
the pines.

Brister Freeman, a handy negro, slave once of Squire Cummings (?), and
Fenda, his hospitable, pleasant wife, large, round, black, who told
fortunes, blacker than all the children of night, such a dusky orb as
had never risen on Concord before.

Zilpha's little house where "she was spinning linen," making the
Walden woods ring with her shrill singing,—a loud, shrill, remarkable
voice,—when once she was away to town, set on fire by English soldiers
on parole, in the last war, and cat and dog and hens all burned up.
Boiling her witch's dinner, and heard muttering to herself over the
gurgling pot by silent traveller, "Ye are all bones, bones."

And Cato, the Guinea negro,—his house and little patch among the
walnuts,—who let the trees grow up till he should be old, and Richardson
got them.

Where Breed's house stood tradition says a tavern once stood, the well
the same, and all a swamp between the woods and town, and road made on
logs.[477]

* * * * *

Bread I made pretty well for awhile, while I remembered the rules; for
I studied this out methodically, going clear back to the primitive days
and first invention of the unleavened kind, and coming gradually down
through that lucky accidental souring of the dough which taught men the
leavening process, and all the various fermentations thereafter, till
you get to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. I went
on very well, mixing rye and flour and Indian and potato with success,
till one morning I had forgotten the rules, and thereafter scalded the
yeast,—killed it out,—and so, after the lapse of a month, was glad after
all to learn that such palatable staff of life could be made out of the
dead and scalt creature and risings that lay flat.

I have hardly met with the housewife who has gone so far with this
mystery. For all the farmers' wives pause at yeast. Given this and they
can make bread. It is the axiom of the argument. What it is, where it
came from, in what era bestowed on man, is wrapped in mystery. It is
preserved religiously, like the vestal fire, and its virtue is not yet
run out. Some precious bottleful, first brought over in the Mayflower,
did the business for America, and its influence is still rising,
swelling, spreading like Atlantic billows over the land,—the soul of
bread, the spiritus, occupying its cellular tissue.[478]

* * * * *

The way to compare men is to compare their respective ideals. The actual
man is too complex to deal with.

Carlyle is an earnest, honest, heroic worker as literary man and
sympathizing brother of his race.

Idealize a man, and your notion takes distinctness at once.

Carlyle's talent is perhaps quite equal to his genius.[479]

Striving [?] to live in reality,—not a general critic, philosopher, or
poet.

Wordsworth, with very feeble talent, has not so great and admirable as
unquestionable and persevering genius.

Heroism, heroism is his word,—his thing.

He would realize a brave and adequate human life, and die hopefully at
last.

* * * * *

Emerson again is a critic, poet, philosopher, with talent not so
conspicuous, not so adequate to his task; but his field is still higher,
his task more arduous. Lives a far more intense life; seeks to realize
a divine life; his affections and intellect equally developed. Has
advanced farther, and a new heaven opens to him. Love and Friendship,
Religion, Poetry, the Holy are familiar to him. The life of an Artist;
more variegated, more observing, finer perception; not so robust,
elastic; practical enough in his own field; faithful, a judge of men.
There is no such general critic of men and things, no such trustworthy
and faithful man. More of the divine realized in him than in any. A
poetic critic, reserving the unqualified nouns for the gods.

* * * * *

Alcott is a geometer, a visionary, the Laplace of ethics, more
intellect, less of the affections, sight beyond talents, a substratum of
practical skill and knowledge unquestionable, but overlaid and concealed
by a faith in the unseen and impracticable. Seeks to realize an entire
life; a catholic observer; habitually takes in the farthest star and
nebula into his scheme. Will be the last man to be disappointed as the
ages revolve. His attitude is one of greater faith and expectation
than that of any man I know; with little to show; with undue share,
for a philosopher, of the weaknesses of humanity. The most hospitable
intellect, embracing high and low. For children how much that means,
for the insane and vagabond, for the poet and scholar![480]

* * * * *

Emerson has special talents unequalled. The divine in man has had no
more easy, methodically distinct expression. His personal influence upon
young persons greater than any man's. In his world every man would be
a poet, Love would reign, Beauty would take place, Man and Nature would
harmonize.

* * * * *

When Alcott's day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect,[481]
the system will crystallize according to them, all seals and falsehood
will slough off, everything will be in its place.

_Feb. 22_ [no year]. Jean Lapin sat at my door to-day, three paces from
me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor, wee
thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and
slender paws. It looked as if nature no longer contained the breed of
nobler bloods, the earth stood on its last legs. Is nature, too, unsound
at last? I took two steps, and lo, away he scud with elastic spring
over the snowy crust into the bushes, a free creature of the forest,
still wild and fleet; and such then was his nature, and his motion
asserted its vigor and dignity. Its large eye looked at first young
and diseased, almost dropsical, unhealthy. But it bound[ed] free, the
venison, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and
soon put the forest between me and itself.[482]

* * * * *

Emerson does not consider things in respect to their essential utility,
but an important partial and relative one, as works of art perhaps. His
probes pass one side of their centre of gravity. His exaggeration is of
a part, not of the whole.

* * * * *

How many an afternoon has been stolen from more profitable, if not
more attractive, industry,—afternoons when a good run of custom might
have been expected on the main street, such as tempt the ladies out
a-shopping,—spent, I say, by me away in the meadows, in the well-nigh
hopeless attempt to set the river on fire or be set on fire by it, with
such tinder as I had, with such flint as I was. Trying at least to make
it flow with milk and honey, as I had heard of, or liquid gold, and
drown myself without getting wet,—a laudable enterprise, though I have
not much to show for it.

So many autumn days spent outside the town, trying to hear what was
in the wind, to hear it and carry it express. I well-nigh sunk all
my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, by running
in the face of it. Depend upon it, if it had concerned either of the
parties, it would have appeared in the yeoman's gazette, the _Freeman_,
with other earliest intelligence.

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and
rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one
cent for it.

Surveyor, if not of higher ways, then of forest paths and all across-lot
routes, keeping many open ravines bridged and passable at all seasons,
where the public heel had testified to the importance of the same,
all not only without charge, but even at considerable risk and
inconvenience. Many a mower would have forborne to complain had he been
aware of the invisible public good that was in jeopardy.

So I went on, I may say without boasting, I trust, faithfully minding my
business without a partner, till it became more and more evident that my
townsmen would not, after all, admit me into the list of town officers,
nor make the place a sinecure with moderate allowance.

I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which pastures in
common, and every one knows that these cattle give you a good deal of
trouble in the way of leaping fences. I have counted and registered
all the eggs I could find at least, and have had an eye to all nooks
and corners of the farm, though I didn't always know whether Jonas
or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my
business. I only knew him for one of the men, and trusted that he was as
well employed as I was. I had to make my daily entries in the general
farm book, and my duties may sometimes have made me a little stubborn
and unyielding.

Many a day spent on the hilltops waiting for the sky to fall, that
I might catch something, though I never caught much, only a little,
manna-wise, that would dissolve again in the sun.

My accounts, indeed, which I can swear to have been faithfully kept,
I have never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and
settled. However, I haven't set my heart upon _that_.

I have watered the red huckleberry and the sand cherry and the hoopwood
[?] tree, and the cornel and spoonhunt and yellow violet, which might
have withered else in dry seasons. The white grape.

To find the bottom of Walden Pond, and what inlet and outlet it might
have.

* * * * *

I found at length that, as they were not likely to offer me any office
in the court-house, any curacy or living anywhere else, I must shift
for myself, I must furnish myself with the necessaries of life.

Now watching from the observatory of the Cliffs or Annursnack to
telegraph any new arrival, to see if Wachusett, Watatic, or Monadnock
had got any nearer. Climbing trees for the same purpose. I have
been reporter for many years to one of the journals of no very wide
circulation, and, as is too common, got only my pains for my labor.
Literary contracts are little binding.[483]

The unlimited anxiety, strain, and care of some persons is one very
incurable form of disease. Simple arithmetic might have corrected it;
for the life of every man has, after all, an epic integrity, and Nature
adapts herself to our weaknesses and deficiencies as well as talents.

No doubt it is indispensable that we should do _our_ work between sun
and sun, but only a wise man will know what that is. And yet how much
work will be left undone, put off to the next day, and yet the system
goes on!

We presume commonly to take care of ourselves, and trust as little as
possible. Vigilant more or less all our days, we say our prayers at
night and commit ourselves to uncertainties, as if in our very days
and most vigilant moments the great part were not a necessary trust
still.[484] How serenity, anxiety, confidence, fear paint the heavens
for us.

All the laws of nature will bend and adapt themselves to the least
motion of man.

All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is
taking place unobserved every instant; when all is ready it takes place,
and only a miracle could stay it.

We [are] compelled to live so thoroughly and sincerely, reflecting on
our steps, reverencing our life, that we never make allowance for the
possible changes.

We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we devote of care
elsewhere.[485]

1837-1847

(ÆT. 20-30)

[This chapter consists of paragraphs (chiefly undated) taken from a
large commonplace-book containing transcripts from earlier journals.
Thoreau drew largely from this book in writing the "Week," and to a less
extent in writing "Walden." Passages used in these volumes (as far as
noted), and those duplicating earlier journal entries already printed
in the preceding pages, have been omitted. All the matter in the book
appears to have been written before 1847.]

I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever
At the bottom of my dream.

This great but silent traveller which had been so long moving past my
door at three miles an hour,—might I not trust myself under its escort?

* * * * *

In friendship we worship moral beauty without the formality of religion.

* * * * *

Consider how much the sun and the summer, the buds of spring and the
sered leaves of autumn, are related to the cabins of the settlers which
we discover on the shore,—how all the rays which paint the landscape
radiate from them. The flight of the crow and the gyrations of the hawk
have reference to their roofs.

* * * * *

Friends do not interchange their common wealth, but each puts his
finger into the private coffer of the other. They will be most familiar,
they will be most unfamiliar, for they will be so one and single that
common themes will not have to be bandied between them, but in silence
they will digest them as one mind; but they will at the same time be
so two and double that each will be to the other as admirable and as
inaccessible as a star. He will view him as it were through "optic
glass,"—"at evening from the top of Fesolé." And after the longest
earthly period, he will still be in apogee to him.

* * * * *

It [the boat] had been loaded at the door the evening before, half a
mile from the river, and provided with wheels against emergencies, but,
with the bulky cargo which we stevedores had stowed in it, it proved
but an indifferent land carriage. For water and water-casks there was
a plentiful supply of muskmelons from our patch, which had just begun
to be ripe, and chests and spare spars and sails and tent and guns and
munitions for the galleon. And as we pushed it through the meadows to
the river's bank, we stepped as lightly about it as if a portion of
our own bulk and burden was stored in its hold. We were amazed to find
ourselves outside still, with scarcely independent force enough to push
or pull effectually.

The robin is seen flying directly and high in the air at this season,
especially over rivers, where in the morning they are constantly passing
and repassing in company with the blackbird.

* * * * *

I have never insisted enough on the nakedness and simplicity of
friendship, the result of all emotions, their subsidence, a fruit of the
temperate zone. The friend is an unrelated man, solitary and of distinct
outline.

* * * * *

Must not our whole lives go unexplained, without regard to us,
notwithstanding a few flourishes of ours, which themselves need
explanation?

* * * * *

Yet a friend does not afford us cheap contrasts or encounters. He
forbears to ask explanations, but doubts and surmises with full
faith, as we silently ponder our fates. He is vested with full powers,
plenipotentiary, all in all.

* * * * *

"Plato gives science sublime counsels, directs her toward the regions
of the ideal; Aristotle gives her positive and severe laws, and directs
her toward a practical end."—DEGERANDO.

* * * * *

All day the dark blue outline of Crotched mountain in Goffstown skirted
the horizon. We took pleasure in beholding its outline, because at this
distance our vision could so easily grasp the design of the founder. It
was a pretty victory to conquer the distance and dimensions so easily
with our eyes, which it would take our feet so long to traverse.

* * * * *

Notwithstanding the unexplained mystery of nature, man still pursues
his studies with confidence, ever ready to grasp the secret, as if the
truth were only contained, not withheld; as one of the three circles on
the cocoanut is always so soft that it may be pierced with a thorn, and
the traveller is grateful for the thick shell which held the liquor so
faithfully.

* * * * *

Gracefulness is undulatory like these waves, and perhaps the sailor
acquires a superior suppleness and grace through the planks of his ship
from the element on which he lives.

* * * * *

The song sparrow, whose voice is one of the first heard in the spring,
sings occasionally throughout the season, from a greater depth in the
summer, as it were behind the notes of other birds.

* * * * *

As the temperature and density of the atmosphere, so the aspects of our
life vary.

In this bright and chaste light the world seemed like a pavilion made
for holidays and washed in light. The ocean was a summer's lake, and
the land a smooth lawn for disport, while in the horizon the sunshine
seemed to fall on walled towns and villas, and the course of our lives
was seen winding on like a country road over the plain.[486]

* * * * *

When we looked out from under our tent, the trees were seen dimly
through the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the grass, and in the damp
air we seemed to inhale a solid fragrance.

* * * * *

Communicating with the villas and hills and forests on either hand,
by the glances we sent them, or the echoes we awakened. We glanced up
many a pleasant ravine with its farmhouse in the distance, where some
contributory stream came in; again the site of a sawmill and a few
forsaken eel-pots were all that greeted us.[487]

* * * * *

While we sail here we can remember unreservedly those friends who dwell
far away on the banks and by the sources of this very river, and people
this world for us, without any harsh and unfriendly interruptions.

* * * * *

At noon his horn[488] is heard echoing from shore to shore to give
notice of his approach to the farmer's wife with whom he is to take
his dinner, frequently in such retired scenes that only muskrats and
kingfishers seem to hear.

* * * * *

If ever our idea of a friend is realized it will be in some broad and
generous natural person, as frank as the daylight, in whose presence
our behavior will be as simple and unconstrained as the wanderer amid
the recesses of these hills.

* * * * *

I who sail now in a boat, have I not sailed in a thought? _Vide_
Chaucer.

* * * * *

The hardest material obeys the same law with the most fluid. Trees
are but rivers of sap and woody fibre flowing from the atmosphere and
emptying into the earth by their trunks, as their roots flow upward
to the surface. And in the heavens there are rivers of stars and milky
ways. There are rivers of rock on the surface and rivers of ore in the
bowels of the earth. And thoughts flow and circulate, and seasons lapse
as tributaries of the current year.

* * * * *

Consider the phenomena of morn, or eve, and you will say that Nature
has perfected herself by an eternity of practice,—evening stealing over
the fields, the stars coming to bathe in retired waters, the shadows of
the trees creeping farther and farther into the meadows, and a myriad
phenomena beside.

* * * * *

Occasionally we had to muster all our energy to get round a point
where the river broke rippling over rocks and the maples trailed their
branches in the stream.

* * * * *

The future reader of history will associate this generation with the
red man in his thoughts, and give it credit for some sympathy with
that race. Our history will have some copper tints and reflections, at
least, and be read as through an Indian-summer haze; but such were not
our associations. But the Indian is absolutely forgotten but by some
persevering poets.

The white man has commenced a new era. What do our anniversaries
commemorate but white men's exploits? For Indian deeds there must be
an Indian memory; the white man will remember his own only. We have
forgotten their hostility as well as friendship. Who can realize that,
within the memory of this generation, the remnant of an ancient and
dusky race of mortals called the Stockbridge Indians, within the limits
of this very State, furnished a company for the war, on condition only
that they should not be expected to fight white man's fashion, or to
train, but Indian fashion. And occasionally their wigwams are seen on
the banks of this very stream still, solitary and inobvious, like the
cabins of the muskrats in the meadows.

They seem like a race who have exhausted the secrets of nature, tanned
with age, while this young and still fair Saxon slip, on whom the sun
has not long shone, is but commencing its career.

* * * * *

Their memory is in harmony with the russet hue of the fall of the
year.[489]

For the Indian there is no safety but in the plow. If he would not be
pushed into the Pacific, he must seize hold of a plow-tail and let go
his bow and arrow, his fish-spear and rifle. This the only Christianity
that will save him.[490]

His fate says sternly to him, "Forsake the hunter's life and enter into
the agricultural, the second, state of man. Root yourselves a little
deeper in the soil, if you would continue to be the occupants of the
country." But I confess I have no little sympathy with the Indians and
hunter men. They seem to me a distinct and equally respectable people,
born to wander and to hunt, and not to be inoculated with the twilight
civilization of the white man.

Father Le Jeune, a French missionary, affirmed "that the Indians were
superior in intellect to the French peasantry of that time," and advised
"that laborers should be sent from France in order to work for the
Indians."

The Indian population within the present boundaries of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut has been estimated not to
have exceeded 40,000 "before the epidemic disease which preceded the
landing of the Pilgrims," and it was far more dense here than elsewhere;
yet they had no more land than they wanted. The present white population
is more than 1,500,000 and two thirds of the land is unimproved.

The Indian, perchance, has not made up his mind to some things which the
white man has consented to; he has not, in all respects, stooped so low;
and hence, though he too loves food and warmth, he draws his tattered
blanket about him and follows his fathers, rather than barter his
birthright. He dies, and no doubt his Genius judges well for him. But
he is not worsted in the fight; he is not destroyed. He only migrates
beyond the Pacific to more spacious and happier hunting-grounds.

A race of hunters can never withstand the inroads of a race of
husbandmen. The latter burrow in the night into their country and
undermine them; and [even] if the hunter is brave enough to resist,
his game is timid and has already fled. The rifle alone would never
exterminate it, but the plow is a more fatal weapon; it wins the country
inch by inch and holds all it gets.

What detained the Cherokees so long was the 2923 plows which that
people possessed; and if they had grasped their handles more firmly,
they would never have been driven beyond the Mississippi. No sense of
justice will ever restrain the farmer from plowing up the land which
is only hunted over by his neighbors. No hunting-field was ever well
fenced and surveyed and its bounds accurately marked, unless it were an
English park. It is a property not held by the hunter so much as by the
game which roams it, and was never well secured by warranty deeds. The
farmer in his treaties says only, or means only, "So far will I plow
this summer," for he has not seed corn enough to plant more; but every
summer the seed is grown which plants a new strip of the forest.

The African will survive, for he is docile, and is patiently learning
his trade and dancing at his labor; but the Indian does not often dance,
unless it be the war dance.

* * * * *

In whatever moment we awake to life, as now I this evening, after
walking along the bank and hearing the same evening sounds that were
heard of yore, it seems to have slumbered just below the surface, as in
the spring the new verdure which covers the fields has never retreated
far from the winter.

All actions and objects and events lose their _distinct_ importance in
this hour, in the brightness of the vision, as, when sometimes the pure
light that attends the setting sun falls on the trees and houses, the
light itself is the phenomenon, and no single object is so distinct to
our admiration as the light itself.

* * * * *

If criticism is liable to abuse, it has yet a great and humane apology.
When my sentiments aspire to be universal, then my neighbor has an equal
interest to see that the expression be just, with myself.

My friends, why should we live?
Life is an idle war, a toilsome peace;
To-day I would not give
One small consent for its securest ease.

Shall we outwear the year
In our pavilions on its dusty plain,
And yet no signal hear
To strike our tents and take the road again?

Or else drag up the slope
The heavy ordnance of religion's train?
Useless, but in the hope
Some far remote and heavenward hill to gain.

* * * * *

The tortoises rapidly dropped into the water, as our boat ruffled the
surface amid the willows. We glided along through the transparent water,
breaking the reflections of the trees.

* * * * *

Not only are we late to find our friends, but mankind are late, and
there is no record of a great success in history.

* * * * *

My friend is not chiefly wise or beautiful or noble. At least it is not
for me to know it. He has no visible form nor appreciable character. I
can never praise him nor esteem him praiseworthy, for I should sunder
him from myself and put a bar between us. Let him not think he can
please me by any behavior or even treat me well enough. When he treats,
I retreat.[491]

* * * * *

I know of no rule which holds so true as that we are always paid
for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. There can be no fairer
recompense than this. Our suspicions exercise a demoniacal power over
the subject of them. By some obscure law of influence, when we are
perhaps unconsciously the subject of another's suspicion, we feel a
strong impulse, even when it is contrary to our nature, to do that which
he expects but reprobates.

* * * * *

No man seems to be aware that his influence is the result of his entire
character, both that which is subject and that which is superior to
his understanding, and what he really means or intends it is not in his
power to explain or offer an apology for.

* * * * *

No man was ever party to a secure and settled friendship. It is no
more a constant phenomenon than meteors and lightning. It is a war of
positions, of silent tactics.

* * * * *

I mark the summer's swift decline;
The springing sward its grave-clothes weaves.[492]

Oh, could I catch the sounds remote!
Could I but tell to human ear
The strains which on the breezes float
And sing the requiem of the dying year!

* * * * *

_Sept. 29, 1842._ To-day the lark sings again down in the meadow, and
the robin peeps, and the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their
box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without the intervention
of winter, if Nature would let them.

* * * * *

Beauty is a finer utility whose end we do not see.

* * * * *

_Oct. 7, 1842._ A little girl has just brought me a purple finch or
American linnet. These birds are now moving south. It reminds me of the
pine and spruce, and the juniper and cedar on whose berries it feeds.
It has the crimson hues of the October evenings, and its plumage still
shines as if it had caught and preserved some of their tints (beams?).
We know it chiefly as a traveller. It reminds me of many things I had
forgotten. Many a serene evening lies snugly packed under its wing.

Gower writes like a man of common sense and good parts who has
undertaken with steady, rather than high, purpose to do narrative with
rhyme. With little or no invention, following in the track of the old
fablers, he employs his leisure and his pen-craft to entertain his
readers and speak a good word for the right. He has no fire, or rather
blaze, though occasionally some brand's end peeps out from the ashes,
especially if you approach the heap in a dark day, and if you extend
your hands over it you experience a slight warmth there more than
elsewhere. In fair weather you may see a slight smoke go up here and
there. He narrates what Chaucer sometimes sings. He tells his story with
a fair understanding of the original, and sometimes it gains a little
in blunt plainness and in point in his hands. Unlike the early Saxon
and later English, his poetry is but a plainer and directer speech than
other men's prose. He might have been a teamster and written his rhymes
on his wagon-seat as he went to mill with a load of plaster.

* * * * *

The banks by retired roadsides are covered with asters, hazels, brakes,
and huckleberry bushes, emitting a dry, ripe scent.[493]

* * * * *

Facts must be learned directly and personally, but principles may be
deduced from information. The collector of facts possesses a perfect
physical organization, the philosopher a perfect intellectual one. One
can walk, the other sit; one acts, the other thinks. But the poet in
some degree does both, and uses and generalizes the results of both; he
generalizes the widest deductions of philosophy.[494]

* * * * *

_Oct. 21, 1842._ The atmosphere is so dry and transparent and, as it
were, inflammable at this season that a candle in the grass shines
white and dazzling, and purer and brighter the farther off it is. Its
heat seems to have been extracted and only its harmless refulgent light
left. It is a star dropped down. The ancients were more than poetically
true when they called fire Vulcan's flower. Light is somewhat almost
moral. The most intense—as the fixed stars and our own sun—has an
unquestionable preëminence among the elements. At a certain stage in the
generation of all life, no doubt, light as well as heat is developed.
It guides to the first rudiments of life. There is a vitality in heat
and light.

* * * * *

Men who are felt rather than understood are being most rapidly
developed. They stand many deep.

* * * * *

In many parts the Merrimack is as wild and natural as ever, and the
shore and surrounding scenery exhibit only the revolutions of nature.
The pine stands up erect on its brink, and the alders and willows fringe
its edge; only the beaver and the red man have departed.

* * * * *

My friend knows me face to face, but many only venture to meet me under
the shield of another's authority, backed by an invisible _corps du
réserve_ of wise friends and relations. To such I say, "Farewell, we
cannot dwell alone in the world."

* * * * *

Sometimes, by a pleasing, sad wisdom, we find ourselves carried beyond
all counsel and sympathy. Our friends' words do not reach us.

* * * * *

The truly noble and settled character of a man is not put forward, as
the king or conqueror does not march foremost in a procession.

* * * * *

Among others I have picked up a curious spherical stone, probably
an implement of war, like a small paving-stone about the size of a
goose egg, with a groove worn quite round it, by which it was probably
fastened to a thong or a withe and answered to strike a severe blow like
a shotted colt. I have since seen larger ones of the same description.

These arrowheads are of every color and of various forms and materials,
though commonly made of a stone which has a conchoidal fracture. Many
small ones are found, of white quartz, which are mere equilateral
triangles, with one side slightly convex. These were probably small shot
for birds and squirrels. The chips which were made in their manufacture
are also found in large numbers wherever a lodge stood for any length
of time. And these slivers are the surest indication of Indian ground,
since the geologists tell us that this stone is not to be found in this
vicinity.

The spear-heads are of the same form and material only larger.

Some are found as perfect and sharp as ever, for time has not the effect
of blunting them, but when they break they have a ragged and cutting
edge. Yet they are so brittle that they can hardly be carried in the
pocket without being broken.

It is a matter of wonder how the Indians made even those rude implements
without iron or steel tools to work with. It is doubtful whether one of
our mechanics, with all the aids of Yankee ingenuity, could soon learn
to copy one of the thousands under our feet. It is well known the art of
making flints with a cold chisel, as practiced in Austria, requires long
practice and knack in the operator, but the arrowhead is of much more
irregular form, and, like the flint, such is the nature of the stone,
must be struck out by a succession of skillful blows.

An Indian to whom I once exhibited some, but to whom they were objects
of as much curiosity as [to] myself, suggested that, as white men
have but one blacksmith, so Indians had one arrowhead-maker for many
families. But there are the marks of too many forges—unless they were
like travelling cobblers—to allow of this.

I have seen some arrowheads from the South Seas which were precisely
similar to those from here, so necessary, so little whimsical is this
little tool.

So has the steel hatchet its prototype in the stone one of the Indian,
as the stone hatchet in the necessities of man.

Venerable are these ancient arts, whose early history is lost in that
of the race itself.

Here, too, is the pestle and mortar,—ancient forms and symbols older
than the plow or the spade.

The invention of that plow which now turns them up to the surface marks
the era of their burial. An era which can never have its history, which
is older than history itself. These are relics of an era older than
modern civilization, compared with which Greece and Rome and Egypt are
modern. And still the savage retreats and the white man advances.

I have the following account of some relics in my possession which
were brought from Taunton [?] in Bristol County. A field which had been
planted with corn for many years. The sod being broken, the wind began
to blow away the soil and then the sand, for several years, until at
length it was blown away to the depth of several feet, where it ceased,
and the ground appeared strewed with the remains of an Indian village,
with regular circles of stones which formed the foundation of their
wigwams, and numerous implements beside.

* * * * *

Commonly we use life sparingly, we husband it as if it were scarce,
and admit the right of prudence; but occasionally we see how ample and
inexhaustible is the stock from which we so scantily draw, and learn
that we need not be prudent, that we may be prodigal, and all expenses
will be met.

* * * * *

Am I not as far from those scenes, though I have wandered a different
route, as my companion who has finished the voyage of life? Am I not
most dead who have not life to die, and cast off my sere leaves?

* * * * *

It seemed the only right way to enter this country, borne on the bosom
of the flood which receives the tribute of its innumerable vales. The
river was the only key adequate to unlock its maze. We beheld the hills
and valleys, the lakes and streams, in their natural order and position.

* * * * *

A state should be a complete epitome of the earth, a natural
principality, and by the gradations of its surface and soil conduct
the traveller to its principal marts. Nature is stronger than law, and
the sure but slow influence of wind and water will balk the efforts of
restricting legislatures. Man cannot set up bounds with safety but where
the revolutions of nature will confirm and strengthen, not obliterate,
them.

* * * * *

Every man's success is in proportion to his _average_ ability. The
meadow flowers spring and bloom where the waters annually deposit
their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. We seem to do
ourselves little credit in our own eyes for our performance, which all
know must ever fall short of our aspiration and promise, which only we
can know entirely; as a stick will avail to reach further than it will
strike effectually, since its greatest momentum is a little short of
its extreme end. But we do not disappoint our neighbors. A man is not
his hope nor his despair, nor his past deed.[495]

* * * * *

But it is in the order of destiny that whatever is remote shall be
near. Whatever the eyes see, the hands shall touch. The sentinels upon
the turret and at the window and on the wall behold successively the
approaching traveller whom the host will soon welcome in the hall.

* * * * *

It is not to be forgotten that the poet is innocent; but he is
young, he is not yet a parent or a brother to his race. There are
a thousand degrees of grace and beauty before absolute humanity and
disinterestedness.

The meanest man can easily test the noblest. Is he embraced? Does he
find him a brother?

* * * * *

I am sometimes made aware of a kindness which may have long since been
shown, which surely memory cannot retain, which reflects its light long
after its heat. I realize, my friend, that there have been times when
thy thoughts of me have been of such lofty kindness that they passed
over me like the winds of heaven unnoticed, so pure that they presented
no object to my eyes, so generous and universal that I did not detect
them. Thou hast loved me for what I was not, but for what I aspired to
be. We shudder to think of the kindness of our friend which has fallen
on us cold, though in some true but tardy hour we have awakened. There
has just reached me the kindness of some acts, not to be forgotten,
not to be remembered. I wipe off these scores at midnight, at rare
intervals, in moments of insight and gratitude.

Far o'er the bow,
Amid the drowsy noon,
Souhegan, creeping slow,
Appeareth soon.[496]

Methinks that by a strict behavior
I could elicit back the brightest star
That hides behind a cloud.

I have rolled near some other spirit's path,
And with a pleased anxiety have felt
Its purer influence on my opaque mass,
But always was I doomed to learn, alas!
I had scarce changèd its sidereal time.

Gray sedulously cultivated poetry, but the plant would not thrive. His
life seems to have needed some more sincere and ruder experience.

* * * * *

Occasionally we rowed near enough to a cottage to see the sunflowers
before the door, and the seed-vessels of the poppy, like small goblets
filled with the waters of Lethe, but without disturbing the sluggish
household.

Driving the small sandpiper before us.

FOG[497]

Thou drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinths
The bittern booms and curlew peeps,
The heron wades and boding rain-crow clucks;
Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Ocean branch that flowest to the sun,
Diluvian spirit, or Deucalion shroud,
Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
And napkin spread by fays,
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
Sea-fowl that with the east wind
Seek'st the shore, groping thy way inland,
By whichever name I please to call thee,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields.

I am amused with the manner in which Quarles and his contemporary poets
speak of Nature,—with a sort of gallantry, as a knight of his lady,—not
as lovers, but as having a thorough respect for her and some title to
her acquaintance. They speak manfully, and their lips are not closed by
affection.

"The pale-faced lady of the black-eyed night."

Nature seems to have held her court then, and all authors were
her gentlemen and esquires and had ready an abundance of courtly
expressions.

Quarles is never weak or shallow, though coarse and untasteful. He
presses able-bodied and strong-backed words into his service, which
have a certain rustic fragrance and force, as if now first devoted
to literature after having served sincere and stern uses. He has the
pronunciation of a poet though he stutters. He certainly speaks the
English tongue with a right manly accent. To be sure his poems have
the[498] musty odor of a confessional.

How little curious is man,
Who hath not searched his mystery a span,
But dreams of mines of treasure
Which he neglects to measure,
For threescore years and ten
Walks to and fro amid his fellow men
O'er this small tract of continental land,
His fancy bearing no divining wand.
Our uninquiring corpses lie more low
Than our life's curiosity doth go;
Our most ambitious steps climb not so high
As in their hourly sport the sparrows fly.
Yonder cloud's blown farther in a day
Than our most vagrant feet may ever stray.
Surely, O Lord, he hath not greatly erred
Who hath so little from his birthplace stirred.
He wanders through this low and shallow world,
Scarcely his bolder thoughts and hopes unfurled,
Through this low wallèd world, which his huge sin
Hath hardly room to rest and harbor in.
Bearing his head just o'er some fallow ground,
Some cowslip'd meadows where the bitterns sound,
He wanders round until his end draws nigh,
And then lays down his aged head to die.
And this is life! this is that famous strife!
His head doth court a fathom from the land,
Six feet from where his grovelling feet do stand.

What is called talking is a remarkable though I believe universal
phenomenon of human society. The most constant phenomenon when men or
women come together is talking. A chemist might try this experiment in
his laboratory with certainty, and set down the fact in his journal.
This characteristic of the race may be considered as established. No
doubt every one can call to mind numerous conclusive instances. Some
nations, it is true, are said to articulate more distinctly than others;
yet the rule holds with those who have the fewest letters in their
alphabet. Men cannot stay long together without talking, according
to the rules of polite society. (As all men have two ears and but one
tongue, they must spend the extra and unavoidable hours of silence in
listening to the whisperings of genius, and this fact it is that makes
silence always respectable in my eyes.) Not that they have anything to
communicate, or do anything quite natural or important to be done so,
but by common consent they fall to using the invention of speech, and
make a conversation, good or bad. They say things, first this one and
then that. They express their "opinions," as they are called.

By a well-directed silence I have sometimes seen threatening and
troublesome people routed. You sit musing as if you were in broad
nature again. They cannot stand it. Their position becomes more and more
uncomfortable every moment. So much humanity over against one without
any disguise,—not even the disguise of speech! They cannot stand it nor
sit against it.

Not only must men talk, but for the most part must talk about talk,—even
about books, or dead and buried talk. Sometimes my friend expects a
few periods from me. Is he exorbitant? He thinks it is my turn now.
Sometimes my companion thinks he has said a good thing, but I don't see
the difference. He looks just as he did before. Well, it is no loss. I
suppose he has plenty more.

Then I have seen very near and intimate, very old friends introduced
by very old strangers, with liberty given to talk. The stranger, who
knows only the countersign, says, "Jonas—Eldred," giving those names
which will make a title good in a court of law. (It may be presumed
that God does not know the Christian names of men.) Then Jonas, like
a ready soldier, makes a remark,—a benediction on the weather it may
be,—and Eldred swiftly responds, and unburdens his breast, and so the
action begins. They bless God and nature many times gratuitously, and
part mutually well pleased, leaving their cards. They did not happen to
be present at each other's christening.

Sometimes I have listened so attentively and with so much interest
to the whole expression of a man that I did not hear one word he was
saying, and saying too with the more vivacity observing my attention.

But a man may be an object of interest to me though his tongue is pulled
out by the roots.

* * * * *

Men sometimes do as if they could eject themselves like bits of
pack-thread from the end of the tongue.

* * * * *

Scholars have for the most part a diseased way of looking at the world.
They mean by it a few cities and unfortunate assemblies of men and
women, who might all be concealed in the grass of the prairies. They
describe this world as old or new, healthy or diseased, according to the
state of their libraries,—a little dust more or less on their shelves.
When I go abroad from under this shingle or slate roof, I find several
things which they have not considered. Their conclusions seem imperfect.

* * * * *

As with two eyes we see and with two ears we hear, with the like
advantage is man added to man. Making no complaint, offering no
encouragement, one human being is made aware of the neighboring
and contemporaneous existence of another. Such is the tenderness of
friendship. We never recognize each other as finite and imperfect
beings, but with a smile and as strangers. My intercourse with men is
governed by the same laws with my intercourse with nature.

* * * * *

Buonaparte said that the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage was the
rarest, but I cannot agree with him.[499] Fear does not awake so early.
Few men are so degenerate as to balk nature by not beginning the day
well.

* * * * *

I hold in my hands a recent volume of essays and poems, in its outward
aspect like the thousands which the press sends forth, and, if the gods
permitted their own inspiration to be breathed in vain, this might be
forgotten in the mass, but the accents of truth are as sure to be heard
on earth as in heaven. The more I read it the more I am impressed by its
sincerity, its depth and grandeur. It already seems ancient and has lost
the traces of its modern birth. It is an evidence of many virtues in the
writer. More serenely and humbly confident, this man has listened to the
inspiration which all may hear, and with greater fidelity reported it.
It is therefore a true prophecy, and shall at length come to pass. It
has the grandeur of the Greek tragedy, or rather its Hebrew original,
yet it is not necessarily referred to any form of faith. The slumbering,
heavy depth of its sentences is perhaps without recent parallel. It
lies like the sward in its native pasture, where its roots are never
disturbed, and not spread over a sandy embankment.

On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has passed,
Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,
My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind
And of such fineness as October airs,
There, after harvest, could I glean my life,
A richer harvest reaping without toil,
And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will,
In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

In October the air is really the fine element the poets describe.[500]
The fields emit a dry and temperate odor. There is something in the
refined and elastic air which reminds us of a work of art. It is like
a verse of Anacreon or a tragedy of Æschylus.

* * * * *

All parts of nature belong to one head, as the curls of a maiden's hair.
How beautifully flow the seasons as one year, and all streams as one
ocean!

* * * * *

I hate museums; there is nothing so weighs upon my spirits. They are the
catacombs of nature. One green bud of spring, one willow catkin, one
faint trill from a migrating sparrow would set the world on its legs
again. The life that is in a single green weed is of more worth than
all this death. They are dead nature collected by dead men. I know not
whether I muse most at the bodies stuffed with cotton and sawdust or
those stuffed with bowels and fleshy fibre outside the cases.

Where is the proper herbarium, the true cabinet of shells, and museum of
skeletons, but in the meadow where the flower bloomed, by the seaside
where the tide cast up the fish, and on the hills and in the valleys
where the beast laid down its life and the skeleton of the traveller
reposes on the grass? 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? Would you
have a dried specimen of a world, or a pickled one?

Embalming is a sin against heaven and earth,—against heaven, who has
recalled the soul and set free the servile elements, and against the
earth, which is thus robbed of her dust. I have had my right-perceiving
senses so disturbed in these haunts as to mistake a veritable living
man for a stuffed specimen, and surveyed him with dumb wonder as the
strangest of the whole collection. For the strangest is that which,
being in many particulars most like, is in some essential particular
most unlike.

* * * * *

It is one great and rare merit in the old English tragedy that it says
something. The words slide away very fast, but toward some conclusion.
It has to do with things, and the reader feels as if he were advancing.
It does not make much odds what message the author has to deliver at
this distance of time, since no message can startle us, but how he
delivers it,—that it be done in a downright and manly way. They come to
the point and do not waste the time.

* * * * *

They say that Carew was a laborious writer, but his poems do not show
it. They are finished, but do not show the marks of the chisel. Drummond
was indeed a quiddler, with little fire or fibre, and rather a taste
_for_ poetry than a taste _of_ it.

* * * * *

After all, we draw on very gradually in English literature to
Shakespeare, through Peele and Marlowe, to say nothing of Raleigh and
Spenser and Sidney. We hear the same great tone already sounding to
which Shakespeare added a serener wisdom and clearer expression. Its
chief characteristics of reality and unaffected manliness are there.
The more we read of the literature of those times, the more does
acquaintance divest the genius of Shakespeare of the in some measure
false mystery which has thickened around it, and leave it shrouded in
the grander mystery of daylight. His critics have for the most part made
their [_sic_] contemporaries less that they might make Shakespeare more.

The distinguished men of those times had a great flow of spirits, a
cheerful and elastic wit far removed from the solemn wisdom of later
days. What another thing was fame and a name then than now! This is seen
in the familiar manner in which they were spoken of by each other and
the nation at large,—_Kit_ Marlowe, and _George_ (Peele), and _Will_
Shakespeare, and _Ben_ Jonson,—great _fellows_,—_chaps_.

* * * * *

We pass through all degrees of life from the least organic to the most
complex. Sometimes we are mere pudding-stone and scoriæ.

* * * * *

The present is the instant work and near process of living, and will be
found in the last analysis to be nothing more nor less than digestion.
Sometimes, it is true, it is indigestion.

* * * * *

Daniel deserves praise for his moderation, and sometimes has risen
into poetry before you know it. Strong sense appears in his epistles,
but you have to remember too often in what age he wrote, and yet that
Shakespeare was his contemporary. His style is without the tricks of
the trade and really in advance of his age. We can well believe that he
was a retired scholar, who would keep himself shut up in his house two
whole months together.

* * * * *

Donne was not a poet, but a man of strong sense, a sturdy English
thinker, full of conceits and whimsicalities, hammering away at his
subject, be it eulogy or epitaph, sonnet or satire, with the patience
of a day laborer, without taste but with an occasional fine distinction
or poetic phrase. He was rather _Doctor_ Donne, than the _poet_ Donne.
His letters are perhaps best.

* * * * *

Lovelace is what his name expresses,—of slight material to make a poet's
fame. His goings and comings are of no great account. His taste is not
so much love of excellence as fear of failure, though in one instance
he has written fearlessly and memorably.

* * * * *

How wholesome are the natural laws to contemplate, as gravity, heat,
light, moisture, dryness. Only let us not interfere. Let the soul
withdraw into the chambers of the heart, let the mind reside steadily
in the labyrinth of the brain, and not interfere with hands or feet more
than with other parts of nature.

* * * * *

Thomson was a true lover of nature and seems to have needed only a
deeper human experience to have taken a more vigorous and lofty flight.
He is deservedly popular, and has found a place on many shelves and in
many cottages. There are great merits in "The Seasons"—and the almanac.
In "Autumn:"—

"Attemper'd suns arise,

* * * * *

... while broad and brown, below,
Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.
Rich, silent, deep, they stand."

The moon in "Autumn:"—

"Her spotted disk,
Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,

* * * * *

... gives all his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.

* * * * *

The whole air whitens with a boundless tide
Of silver radiance, trembling round the world."

My friend, thou art not of some other race and family of men;—thou art
flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Has not nature associated us in
many ways?[501] Water from the same fountain, lime from the same quarry,
grain from the same field compose our bodies. And perchance our elements
but reassert their ancient kindredship. Is it of no significance that
I have so long partaken of the same loaf with thee, have breathed the
same air summer and winter, have felt the same heat and cold, the same
fruits of summer have been pleased to refresh us both, and thou hast
never had a thought of different fibre from my own?[502]

Our kindred, of one blood with us. With the favor and not the
displeasure of the gods, we have partaken the same bread.

* * * * *

It is hard to know rocks. They are crude and inaccessible to our nature.
We have not enough of the stony element in us.

* * * * *

It is hard to know men by rumor only. But to stand near somewhat living
and conscious. Who would not sail through mutiny and storm farther than
Columbus, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some continent man?

* * * * *

My friend can only be in any measure my foe, because he is fundamentally
my friend; for everything is after all more nearly what it should
rightfully be, than that which it is simply by failing to be the other.

* * * * *

It [friendship] cannot be the subject of reconciliation or the theme of
conversation ever between friends. The true friend must in some sense
disregard all professions of friendship and forget them.

* * * * *

It is as far from pity as from contempt. I should hesitate even to call
it the highest sympathy, since the word is of suspicious origin and
suggests suffering rather than joy. It was established before religion,
for men are not friends in religion, but over and through it; and it
records no apostasy or repentance, but there is a certain divine and
innocent and perennial health about it.

* * * * *

Its charity is generosity, its virtue nobleness, its religion trust. We
come nearer to friendship with flowers and inanimate objects than with
merely affectionate and loving men. It is not for the friend to be just
even,—at least he is not to be lost in this attribute,—but to be only
a large and free existence, representative of humanity, its general
court. Admirable to us as the heavenly bodies, but like them affording
rather a summer heat and daylight,—the light and fire of sunshine and
stars,—rather than the intense heats and splendors which our weakness
and appetite require.

* * * * *

Yesterday I skated after a fox over the ice. Occasionally he sat on his
haunches and barked at me like a young wolf. It made me think of the
bear and her cubs mentioned by Captain Parry, I think. All brutes seem
to have a genius for mystery, an Oriental aptitude for symbols and the
language of signs; and this is the origin of Pilpay and Æsop. The fox
manifested an almost human suspicion of mystery in my actions. While
I skated directly after him, he cantered at the top of his speed; but
when I stood still, though his fear was not abated, some strange but
inflexible law of his nature caused him to stop also, and sit again on
his haunches. While I still stood motionless, he would go slowly a rod
to one side, then sit and bark, then a rod to the other side, and sit
and bark again, but did not retreat, as if spellbound. When, however, I
commenced the pursuit again, he found himself released from his durance.

Plainly the fox belongs to a different order of things from that which
reigns in the village. Our courts, though they offer a bounty for his
hide, and our pulpits, though they draw many a moral from his cunning,
are in few senses contemporary with his free forest life.

* * * * *

To the poet considered as an artist, his words must be as the relation
of his oldest and finest memory, and wisdom derived from the remotest
experience.

* * * * *

I have thought, when walking in the woods through a certain retired
dell, bordered with shrub oaks and pines, far from the village and
affording a glimpse only through an opening of the mountains in the
horizon, how my life might pass there, simple and true and natural, and
how many things would be impossible to be done there. How many books I
might not read!

* * * * *

Why avoid my friends and live among strangers? Why not reside in my
native country?

* * * * *

Many a book is written which does not necessarily suggest or imply the
phenomenon or object to explain which it professes to have been written.

* * * * *

Every child should be encouraged to study not man's system of nature
but nature's.

* * * * *

Giles Fletcher knew how to write, and has left English verses behind.
He is the most valuable imitator of the Spenserian stanza, and adds a
moral tone of his own.

TO A MARSH HAWK IN SPRING

There is health in thy gray wing,
Health of nature's furnishing.
Say, thou modern-winged antique,
Was thy mistress ever sick?

In each heaving of thy wing
Thou dost health and leisure bring,
Thou dost waive disease and pain
And resume new life again.

Man walks in nature still alone,
And knows no one,
Discovers no lineament nor feature
Of any creature.

Though all the firmament
Is o'er me bent,
Yet still I miss the grace
Of an intelligent and kindred face.

I still must seek the friend
Who does with nature blend.
Who is the person in her mask,
He is the friend I ask;

Who is the expression of her meaning,
Who is the uprightness of her leaning,
Who is the grown child of her weaning.

We twain would walk together
Through every weather,
And see this aged Nature
Go with a bending stature.

The centre of this world,
The face of Nature,
The site of human life,
Some sure foundation
And nucleus of a nation,
At least, a private station.

It is the saddest thought of all, that what we are to others, that we
are much more to ourselves,—avaricious, mean, irascible, affected,—we
are the victims of these faults. If our pride offends our humble
neighbor, much more does it offend ourselves, though our lives are never
so private and solitary.

* * * * *

If the Indian is somewhat of a stranger in nature, the gardener is too
much a familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the latter's
closeness to his mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former's
distance. Yet the hunter seems to have a property in the moon which
even the farmer has not. Ah! the poet knows uses of plants which are
not easily reported, though he cultivates no parterre. See how the sun
smiles on him while he walks in the gardener's aisles, rather than on
the gardener.

* * * * *

Not only has the foreground of a picture its glass of transparent
crystal spread over it, but the picture itself is a glass or transparent
medium to a remoter background. We demand only of all pictures that they
be perspicuous, that the laws of perspective have been truly observed.
It is not the fringed foreground of the desert nor the intermediate
oases that detain the eye and the imagination, but the infinite, level,
and roomy horizon, where the sky meets the sand, and heavens and earth,
the ideal and actual, are coincident, the background into which leads
the path of the pilgrim.

* * * * *

All things are in revolution; it is the one law of nature by which order
is preserved, and time itself lapses and is measured. Yet some things
men will do from age to age, and some things they will not do.

"Fisherman's Acct. for 1805[503] Began March 25

cts.
Dd Mr. Saml Potter 2 qts W I 3/ 1 lb sugar 10d $0.64
One Cod line 5/ 84
April 8 Qt W I 1/6 & 1 lb Sugar 10d & Brown Mug 48
9 Qt N E rum 1/ 10th Do. of Do 1/ 33
13 Qt N E rum & 1 lb Sugar 15th 2 Qts N E rum 2/ 62
17 Qt W I 1/6 Do N E 1/ lb Sugar 9d & Qt N E Rum 71
22 Qt N E rum 1/ lb sugar 9d & Qt N E rum 1/ 44½
23 Qt N E rum 1/ Do of Do & sugar 5d 39
24 Qt N E rum 1/ lb sugar 9d 28½
29 Qt N E rum 1/ & lb sugar 9d—30th Rum 1/ 44½
May first Qt rum ½ lb Sugar 1/5d 22
Qt N E rum 1/ & ½ lb Loaf Sugar 9d 29
4 Qt rum 1/ Sugar 5d 22
6 Qt N E rum 1/ & lb good sugar 11d 31
7 Qt N E rum 1/8th Qt N E rum 1/ & ½ lb Sugar 5d 40
11 Qt N E rum 11d lb Sugar 10d 29
15 Qt rum & lb Sugar 1/9 & Qt N E rum 44
16 To a Line for the Sceene 3/ 0.50
20 To Qt N E rum 11d lb Sugar 10d 0.29
21 To Qt N E rum 11d & lb Sugar 10d 0.29
27 To Qt W I 1/6 & lb Sugar 10d 0.39
June 5th 1805 Settled this acct by Recev.g Cash in Full $8.82½

How many young finny contemporaries of various character and destiny,
form and habits, we have even in this water! And it will not be
forgotten by some memory that we _were_ contemporaries. It is of _some_
import. We shall be some time friends, I trust, and know each other
better. Distrust is too prevalent now. We are so much alike! have so
many faculties in common! I have not yet met with the philosopher who
could, in a quite conclusive, undoubtful way, show me _the_, and, if
not _the_, then how _any_, difference between man and a fish. We are so
much alike! How much could a really tolerant, patient, humane, and truly
great and natural man make of them, if he should try? For they are to
be understood, surely, as all things else, by no other method than that
of sympathy. It is easy to say what they are not to us, _i. e._, what
we are not to them; but what we might and ought to be is another affair.

* * * * *

In the tributaries the brook minnow and the trout. Even in the rills
emptying into the river, over which you stride at a step, you may see
small trout not so large as your finger glide past or hide under the
bank.

* * * * *

The character of this [the horned pout], as indeed of all fishes,
depends directly upon that of the water it inhabits, those taken in
clear and sandy water being of brighter hue and cleaner and of firmer
and sweeter flesh. It makes a peculiar squeaking noise when drawn out,
which has given it the name of the minister or preacher.

* * * * *

The bream is the familiar and homely sparrow, which makes her nest
everywhere, and is early and late.

The pickerel is the hawk, a fish of prey, hovering over the finny broods.

The pout is the owl, which steals so noiselessly about at evening with
its clumsy body.

The shiner is the summer yellowbird, or goldfinch, of the river.

The sucker is the sluggish bittern, or stake-driver.

The minnow is the hummingbird.

The trout is the partridge woodpecker.

The perch is the robin.[504]

* * * * *

We read Marlowe as so much poetical pabulum. It is food for poets, water
from the Castalian Spring, some of the atmosphere of Parnassus, raw and
crude indeed, and at times breezy, but pure and bracing. Few have so
rich a phrase! He had drunk deep of the Pierian Spring, though not deep
enough, and had that fine madness, as Drayton says,

"Which justly should possess a poet's brain."

We read his "Dr. Faustus," "Dido, Queen of Carthage," and "Hero and
Leander," especially the last, without being wearied. He had many of
the qualities of a great poet, and was in some degree worthy to precede
Shakespeare. But he seems to have run to waste for want of seclusion
and solitude, as if mere pause and deliberation would have added a new
element of greatness to his poetry. In his unquestionably fine, heroic
tone it would seem as if he had the rarest part of genius, and education
could have added the rest. The "Hero and Leander" tells better for his
character than the anecdotes which survive.

I fain would stretch me by the highway-side,
To thaw and trickle with the melting snow,
That mingled soul and body with the tide
I too might through the pores of Nature flow,[505]

Might help to forward the new spring along,
If it were mine to choose my toil or day,
Scouring the roads with yonder sluice-way throng,
And so work out my tax on _Her_ highway.

* * * * *

Yet let us thank the purblind race
Who still have thought it good
With lasting stone to mark the place
Where braver men have stood.

In Concord, town of quiet name
And quiet fame as well, ...

* * * * *

I've seen ye, sisters, on the mountain-side,
When your green mantles fluttered in the wind;
I've seen your footprints on the lake's smooth shore,
Lesser than man's, a more ethereal trace;
I have heard of ye as some far-famed race,
Daughters of gods, whom I should one day meet,
Or mothers, I might say, of all our race.
I reverence your natures, so like mine
Yet strangely different, like but still unlike.
Thou only stranger that hast crossed my path,
Accept my hospitality; let me hear
The message which thou bring'st.
Made different from me,
Perchance thou'rt made to be
The creature of a different destiny.
I know not who ye are that meekly stand
Thus side by side with man in every land.
When did ye form alliance with our race,
Ye children of the moon, who in mild nights
Vaulted upon the hills and sought this earth?
Reveal that which I fear ye cannot tell,
Wherein ye are not I, wherein ye dwell
Where I can never come.
What boots it that I do regard ye so?
Does it make suns to shine or crops to grow?
What boots [it] that I never should forget
That I have sisters sitting for me yet?
And what are sisters?
The robust man, who can so stoutly strive,
In this bleak world is hardly kept alive.
And who is it protects _ye_, smooths _your_ way?

We can afford to lend a willing ear occasionally to those earnest
reformers of the age. Let us treat them hospitably. Shall we be
charitable only to the poor? What though they are fanatics? Their errors
are likely to be generous errors, and these may be they who will put to
rest the American Church and the American government, and awaken better
ones in their stead.

Let us not meanly seek to maintain our delicate lives in chambers or in
legislative halls by a timid watchfulness of the rude mobs that threaten
to pull down our baby-houses. Let us not think to raise a revenue
which shall maintain our domestic quiet by an impost on the liberty
of speech. Let us not think to live by the principle of self-defense.
Have we survived our accidents hitherto, think you, by virtue of our
good swords,—that three-foot lath that dangles by your side, or those
brazen-mouthed pieces under the burying hill which the trainers keep
to hurrah with in the April and July mornings? Do our protectors burrow
under the burying-ground hill, on the edge of the bean-field which you
all know, gorging themselves once a year with powder and smoke, and kept
bright and in condition by a chafing of oiled rags and rotten stone?
Have we resigned the protection of our hearts and civil liberties to
that feathered race of wading birds and marching men who drill but
once a month?—and I mean no reproach to our Concord train-bands, who
certainly make a handsome appearance—and dance well. Do we enjoy the
sweets of domestic life undisturbed, because the naughty boys are all
shut up in that whitewashed "stone-yard," as it is called, and see the
Concord meadows only through a grating.

No, let us live amid the free play of the elements. Let the dogs bark,
let the cocks crow, and the sun shine, and the winds blow!

Ye do commend me to all virtue ever,
And simple truth, the law by which we live.
Methinks that I can trust your clearer sense
And your immediate knowledge of the truth.
I would obey your influence, one with fate.

There is a true march to the sentence, as if a man or a body of men were
actually making progress there step by step, and these are not the mere
_disjecta membra_, the dispersed and mutilated members though it were of
heroes, which can no longer walk and join themselves to their comrades.
They are not perfect nor liberated pieces of art for the galleries, yet
they stand on the natural and broad pedestal of the living rock, but
have a principle of life and growth in them still, as has that human
nature from which they spring.[506]

* * * * *

It is a marvel how the birds contrive to survive in this world. These
tender sparrows that flit from bush to bush this evening, though it is
so late, do not seem improvident, [but appear] to have found a roost for
the night. They must succeed by weakness and reliance, for they are not
bold and enterprising, as their mode of life would seem to require, but
very weak and tender creatures. I have seen a little chipping sparrow,
come too early in the spring, shivering on an apple twig, drawing in
its head and striving to warm it in its muffled feathers; and it had no
voice to intercede with nature, but peeped as helpless as an infant,
and was ready to yield up its spirit and die without any effort. And
yet this was no new spring in the revolution of the seasons.

* * * * *

Our offense is rank, it smells to heaven. In the midst of our village,
as in most villages, there is a slaughterhouse, and throughout the
summer months, day and night, to the distance of half a mile, which
embraces the greater part of the village, the air [is] filled with such
scents as we instinctively avoid in a woodland walk; and doubtless, if
our senses were once purified and educated by a simpler and truer life,
we should not consent to live in such a neighborhood.

* * * * *

George Melvin, our Concord trapper, told me that in going to the spring
near his house, where he kept his minnows for bait, he found that they
were all gone, and immediately suspected that a mink had got them;
so he removed the snow all around and laid open the trail of a mink
underneath, which he traced to his hole, where were the fragments of his
booty. There he set his trap, and baited it with fresh minnows. Going
again soon to the spot, he found one of the mink's fore legs in the trap
gnawed off near the body, and, having set it again, he caught the mink
with his three legs, the fourth having only a short bare bone sticking
out.

When I expressed some surprise at this, and said that I heard of such
things but did not know whether to believe them, and was now glad to
have the story confirmed, said he: "Oh, the muskrats are the greatest
fellows to gnaw their legs off. Why I caught one once that had just
gnawed his third leg off, this being the third time he had been
trapped; and he lay dead by the trap, for he couldn't run on one leg."
Such tragedies are enacted even in this sphere and along our peaceful
streams, and dignify at least the hunter's trade. Only courage does
anywhere prolong life, whether of man or beast.

When they are caught by the leg and cannot get into the water to drown
themselves, they very frequently gnaw the limb off. They are commonly
caught under water or close to the edge, and dive immediately with the
trap and go to gnawing and are quackled and drowned in a moment, though
under other circumstances they will live several minutes under water.
They prefer to gnaw off a fore leg to a hind leg, and do not gnaw off
their tails. He says the wharf rats are very common on the river and
will swim and cross it like a muskrat, and will gnaw their legs and even
their tails off in the trap.

These would be times that tried men's souls, if men had souls to be
tried; aye, and the souls of brutes, for they must have souls as well
as teeth. Even the water-rats lead sleepless nights and live Achillean
lives. There are the strong will and the endeavor. Man, even the hunter,
naturally has sympathy with every brave effort, even in his game, to
maintain that life it enjoys. The hunter regards with awe his game, and
it becomes at last his medicine.[507]

* * * * *

Of Cadew or Case worms there are the Ruff-coats or Cockspurs, whose
cases are rough and made of various materials, and the Piper Cadis or
Straw-worm, made of reed or rush, and straight and smooth.

* * * * *

Carlyle's works are not to be studied,—hardly re-read. Their first
impression is the truest and the deepest. There is no reprint. If you
look again, you will be disappointed and find nothing answering to the
mood they have excited. They are true natural products in this respect.
All things are but once, and never repeated. The first faint blushes
of the morning gilding the mountain-tops, with the pale phosphorus
and saffron-colored clouds,—they verily transport us to the morning of
creation; but what avails it to travel eastward, or look again there an
hour hence. We should be as far in the day ourselves, mounting toward
our meridian. There is no _double entendre_ for the alert reader; in
fact the work was designed for such complete success that it serves
but for a single occasion. It is the luxury of wealth and art when for
every deed its own instrument is manufactured. The knife which sliced
the bread of Jove ceased to be a knife when that service was rendered.

* * * * *

For every inferior, earthly pleasure we forego, a superior, celestial
one is substituted.

To purify our lives requires simply to weed out what is foul and noxious
and the sound and innocent is supplied, as nature purifies the blood if
we will but reject impurities.

Nature and human life are as various to our several experiences as
our constitutions are various. Who shall say what prospect life offers
to another? Could a greater miracle take place than if we should look
through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages
of the world in an hour,—aye, in all the worlds of the ages. What I have
read of rhapsodists, of the primitive poets, Argonautic expeditions,
the life of demigods and heroes, Eleusinian mysteries, etc., suggests
nothing so ineffably grand and informing as this would be.

* * * * *

The phœbe came into my house to find a place for its nest, flying
through the windows.

* * * * *

It was a bright thought, that of man's to have bells; no doubt the birds
hear them with pleasure.

* * * * *

To compete with the squirrels in the chestnut harvest, picking ofttimes
the nuts that bear the mark of their teeth.

* * * * *

I require of any lecturer that he will read me a more or less simple and
sincere account of his own life, of what he has done and thought,—not
so much what he has read or heard of other men's lives and actions,
but some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant
land,—and if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land
to me,—describing even his outward circumstances and what adventures
he has had, as well as his thoughts and feelings about them. He who
gives us only the results of other men's lives, though with brilliant
temporary success, we may in some measure justly accuse of having
defrauded us of our time. We want him to give us that which was most
precious to him,—not his life's blood but even that for which his life's
blood circulated, what he has got by living. If anything ever yielded
him pure pleasure or instruction, let him communicate it. Let the
money-getter tell us how much he loves wealth, and what means he takes
to accumulate it. He must describe those facts which he knows and loves
better than anybody else. He must not write on foreign missions. The
mechanic will naturally lecture about his trade, the farmer about his
farm, and every man about that which he, compared with other men, knows
best. Yet incredible mistakes are made. I have heard an owl lecture with
perverse show of learning upon the solar microscope, and chanticleer
upon nebulous stars, when both ought to have been sound asleep, the one
in a hollow tree, the other on his roost.

After I lectured here before, this winter, I heard that some of my
townsmen had expected of me some account of my life at the pond. This
I will endeavor to give to-night.

* * * * *

I know a robust and hearty mother who thinks that her son, who died
abroad, came to his end by living too low, as she had since learned
that he drank only water. Men are not inclined to leave off hanging
men to-day, though they will be to-morrow. I heard of a family in
Concord this winter which would have starved, if it had not been for
potatoes—and tea and coffee.

It has not been my design to live cheaply, but only to live as I could,
not devoting much time to getting a living. I made the most of what
means were already got.

* * * * *

To determine the character of our life and how adequate it is to its
occasion, just try it by any test, as for instance that this same sun is
seen in Europe and in America at the same time, that these same stars
are visible in twenty-four hours to two thirds the inhabitants of the
globe, and who knows how many and various inhabitants of the universe.
What farmer in his field lives according even to this somewhat trivial
material fact.

I just looked up at a fine twinkling star and thought that a voyager
whom I know, now many days' sail from this coast, might possibly be
looking up at that same star with me. The stars are the apexes of what
triangles! There is always the possibility—the possibility, I say—of
being _all_, or remaining a particle, in the universe.

* * * * *

In these days and in this country, a few implements, as the axe, shovel,
etc., and, to the studious, light and stationery and access to a few
books, will rank next to necessaries, but can all be obtained at a very
trifling cost. Under the head of clothing is to be ranked bedding, or
night-clothes.

We are very anxious to keep the animal heat in us. What pains we take
with our beds! robbing the nests of birds and their breasts, this
shelter within a shelter, as the mole has a bed of leaves and grass at
the end of its burrow.

* * * * *

In the summer I caught fish occasionally in the pond, but since
September have not missed them.

* * * * *

In a man or his work, over all special excellence or failure, prevails
the general authority or value.

* * * * *

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows
how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have
earned it.

* * * * *

All matter, indeed, is capable of entertaining thought.

* * * * *

The complete subjugation of the body to the mind prophesies the
sovereignty of the latter over the whole of nature. The instincts are
to a certain extent a sort of independent nobility, of equal date with
the mind, or crown,—ancient dukes and princes of the regal blood. They
are perhaps the mind of our ancestors subsided in us, the experience of
the race.

A small sum would really do much good, if the donor spent himself
with it and did not merely relinquish it to some distant society whose
managers do the good or the evil with it. How much might be done for
this town with a hundred dollars! I could provide a select course of
lectures for the summer or winter with that sum, which would be an
incalculable benefit to every inhabitant. With a thousand dollars
I could purchase for this town a more complete and select library
than exists in the State out of Cambridge and Boston, perhaps a more
available one than any. Men sit palsied and helpless by the side of
their buried treasures.[508]

After all those who do most good with money, do it with the least,
because they can do better than to acquire it.

_March 13, 1846._ The song sparrow and blackbird heard to-day. The snow
going off. The ice in the pond one foot thick.

* * * * *

Men talk much of coöperation nowadays, of working together to some
worthy end; but what little coöperation there is, is as if it were
not, being a simple result of which the means are hidden, a harmony
inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will coöperate with equal faith
everywhere. If he has not faith he will continue to live like the rest
of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To coöperate thoroughly
implies to get your living together. I heard it proposed lately that
two young men should travel together over the world, the one earning his
means as he went, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket.
It was easy to see that they could not long be companions, or coöperate,
since one would not operate at all. They would part company at the first
and most interesting crisis in their adventures.

END OF VOLUME I

The Riverside Press

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY
CAMBRIDGE
MASSACHUSETTS

FOOTNOTES

[1] In many cases the punctuation seems to be absolutely
without significance; as if the writer had simply fallen into
the habit of dropping dashes in an absent-minded way as he
passed along. The following examples (the longest an extreme
case) will show what is meant:—

"I heard from time to time—a new note."

"The _Equisetum sylvaticum_—there is now of a reddish cast."

"It is very difficult—to find a suitable place to camp near
the road—affording—water—a good—prospect and retirement."

"Another alighted near—by—and a third a little further off."

[2] Under date of June 9, 1854, we find him writing: "I
should like to know the birds of the woods better. What birds
inhabit our woods? I hear their various notes ringing through
them. What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be
forever strange and interesting to me." Even the glass that
he finally bought was not an opera-glass, but a "spy-glass"
(monocular) so called, and must have been of comparatively
little help in the identification of woodland species.

[3] Once he saw it (August 3, 1858), and then it proved to
be a Maryland yellow-throat. At other times it was almost
certainly an oven-bird.

[4] [_Week_, p. 375; Riv. 464.]

[5] [_Week_, p. 314; Riv. 390.]

[6] [_Week_, p. 352; Riv. 435, 436.]

[7] [_Week_, p. 348; Riv. 430.]

[8] [_Week_, p. 383; Riv. 473.]

[9] [_Week_, p. 417; Riv. 515.]

[10] [_Week_, p. 93; Riv. 116. _Excursions_, p. 138; Riv.
169.]

[11] [_Week_, p. 373; Riv. 461.]

[12] [_Excursions_, pp. 126, 127; Riv. 155, 156.]

[13] [_Week_, pp. 347, 348; Riv. 429, 430.]

[14] [Later.] We must consider war and slavery, with many
other institutions and even the best existing governments,
notwithstanding their apparent advantages, as the abortive
rudiments of nobler institutions such as distinguish man in
his savage and half-civilized state.

[15] [_Excursions_, pp. 127, 128; Riv. 157.]

[16] [_Week_, p. 186; Riv. 231. _The Service_, Boston, 1902,
p. 21]

[17] [A fanciful derivation of the word "Saxons"?]

[18] [_Excursions_, p. 128; Riv. 158.]

[19] [_Excursions_, p. 128; Riv. 157, 158.]

[20] [_Familiar Letters_, Sept. 8, 1841.]

[21] [_Week_, p. 163; Riv. 203.]

[22] [_Excursions_, p. 141; Riv. 173.]

[23] [_Excursions_, p. 127; Riv. 156.]

[24] [_Excursions_, p. 112; Riv. 138.]

[25] [_Week_, pp. 347, 348; Riv. 429-431.]

[26] [_Week_, p. 66; Riv. 82, 83.]

[27] [_Week_, p. 66; Riv. 83.]

[28] [_Week_, p. 96; Riv. 119, 120.]

[29] [_Week_, p. 65; Riv. 81.]

[30] [_Week_, p. 96; Riv. 120.]

[31] ["Carlyleish" is written in the margin against this
passage.]

[32] [The word seems to be a new one, but its meaning is
clear.]

[33] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[34] [_Excursions_, p. 108; Riv. 133.]

[35] [_Week_, p. 78; Riv. 97.]

[36] [_Week_, pp. 94, 95; Riv. 117, 119.]

[37] [_Week_, p. 79; Riv. 98, 99. _The Service_, p. 4.]

[38] [_Week_, pp. 9-11; Riv. 11, 13.]

[39] [_Week_, p. 96; Riv. 120.]

[40] [_Week_, p. 319; Riv. 395.]

[41] [See _Week_, p. 95 (Riv. 118), where the passages
referred to appear in translation.]

[42] [_Excursions_, pp. 181, 182; Riv. 221, 222.]

[43] [All but the last stanza, somewhat revised and without
title, appears in _Excursions_, pp. 176, 177; Riv. 215, 216.]

[44] [Cf. _Week_, pp. 417-420; Riv. 515-518.]

[45] [_Excursions_, p. 108; Riv. 133. "Drinking" for "Sipping"
in l. 3 is the only change.]

[46] [_Excursions_, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 135.]

[47] [_Week_, p. 244; Riv. 302. Lines 2 and 3 are altered.]

[48] [_Excursions_, p. 112; Riv. 138.]

[49] [_Excursions, and Poems_, pp. 120 and 409; _Excursions_,
Riv. 147.]

[50] [_Week_, p. 180; Riv. 224.]

[51] [_Week_, pp. 364, 365; Riv. 451, 452.]

[52] [This poem will be found in _Excursions, and Poems_, p.
417, under the title "Ding Dong," somewhat revised and without
the last stanza.]

[53] [_Excursions_, p. 109; Riv. 134.]

[54] [_Walden_, p. 8; Riv. 14, 15.]

[55] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 278; _Misc._, Riv. 36,
37. _The Service_, pp. 5, 6.]

[56] [_Week_, pp. 276, 277; Riv. 343, 344.]

[57] [_Week_, p. 188; Riv. 234.]

[58] [_Week_, p. 188; Riv. 234.]

[59] [_Week_, p. 200; Riv. 248.]

[60] [_Week_, pp. 302, 303; Riv. 375, 376.]

[61] [_Week_, p. 38; Riv. 47.]

[62] [_Week_, p. 38; Riv. 47.]

[63] [_Week_, p. 39; Riv. 48.]

[64] [_Week_, p. 39; Riv. 48, 49.]

[65] [_Week_, p. 39; Riv. 49.]

[66] [_Week_, p. 43; Riv. 54.]

[67] [_Week_, p. 118; Riv. 147.]

[68] [_Week_, p. 179; Riv. 222.]

[69] [_Week_, p. 248; Riv. 307.]

[70] [_Week_, p. 309; Riv. 383.]

[71] [See_ Week_, pp. 318-322; Riv. 394-399.]

[72] [The original name of Woodstock, N. H.]

[73] [See _Week_, pp. 335-353; Riv. 414-437.]

[74] [See _Week_, pp. 356-420; Riv. 442-518.]

[75] [_Week_, pp. 110, 111; Riv. 137.]

[76] [_Week_, p. 110; Riv. 137.]

[77] [_Excursions_, p. 107; Riv. 132.]

[78] [_Excursions_, p. 107; Riv. 131, 132.]

[79] [This comes at the end of the first book of Journal
transcripts (1837-39) and follows immediately a bit of verse
dated Oct. 16, 1838, which has been included in its proper
chronological place.]

[80] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277: _Misc._, Riv. 35.
_The Service_, p. 1.]

[81] [_Excursions_, p. 107; Riv. 132.]

[82] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv. 35.
_The Service_, p. 1.]

[83] [_Week_, p. 376; Riv. 465. _The Service_, pp. 8, 9.]

[84] [Plutarch's _Morals_, "Roman Questions," lxviii.]

[85] [_The Service_, p. 9.]

[86] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[87] [A pencil interlineation in this paragraph is as
follows:] The soldier is the degenerate hero, as the priest
is the degenerate saint; and the soldier and the priest are
related as the hero and [the] saint. The one's virtue is
bravery, the other's bravery virtue. Mankind still pay to the
soldier the honors due only to the hero. They delight to do
him honor. He is adorned with silver and gold and the colors
of the rainbow, invested with outward splendor; music is for
him especially, and his life is a holiday.

[88] [_The Service_, p. 11.]

[89] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 228.]

[90] [_The Service_, p. 11.]

[91] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[92] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 228.]

[93] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 227. _The Service_, p. 13.]

[94] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 228. _The Service_, p. 14.]

[95] [_The Service_, p. 14. See also p. 151 of this volume.]

[96] [_The Service_, p. 15.] [In pencil on a fly-leaf of the
Journal:] The coward substitutes for this thrilling sphere
music a universal wail, for this melodious chant a nasal cant,
and but whistles to keep his courage up. He blows a feeble
blast of slender melody and can compel his neighborhood only
into a partial concord with himself, because nature has but
little sympathy with such a soul. Hence he hears no accordant
note in the universe, and is a coward, or consciously outcast
and deserted man. But the brave man, without drum or trumpet,
compels concord everywhere by the universality and tunefulness
of his soul.

[97] [_The Service_, p. 13.]

[98] [_Week_, pp. 183, 184; Riv. 228. _The Service_, p. 13.
The quotation is from Plutarch's _Morals_, "Of Superstition."]

[99] [_The Service_, pp. 7, 8. See p. 154 of this volume.]

[100] [_The Service_, pp. 23, 24.]

[101] [Cf. _Week_, pp. 274-307; Riv. 341-381.]

[102] [_Excursions_, p. 108; Riv. 133.]

[103] [Stanzas 8, 10, 11, 12, with revision, _Week_, p.
255; Riv. 317. Stanzas 2-5, 9, 13, _Familiar Letters,
Introduction_.]

[104] [Week, p. 93; Riv. 116.]

[105] [_Week_, p. 93; Riv. 116.]

[106] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 164.]

[107] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 165.]

[108] [The criticism was not transcribed here. The title was
inserted doubtless as a memorandum and to record the date of
its composition. See Week, p. 327; Riv. 405.]

[109] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 279; _Misc._, Riv.
37.]

[110] [_The Service_, p. 20.]

[111] [_Week_, p. 351; Riv. 434.]

[112] [_Week_, p. 351; Riv. 434. A sheet with specimens of
this familiar school-boy amusement is slipped into one of the
manuscript Journal volumes.]

[113] [_Excursions_, p. 118; Riv. 146.]

[114] [_Week_, p. 406; Riv. 501.]

[115] [_Excursions_, p. 114; Riv. 141.]

[116] [_Excursions_, pp. 120, 121; Riv. 148, 149.]

[117] [See pp. 174 and 263.]

[118] [_Week_, p. 300; Riv. 373.]

[119] [_Excursions_, p. 114; Riv. 140.]

[120] [_Excursions_, pp. 119, 120; Riv. 147, 148.]

[121] [Stanzas 3, 2, and 5, in this order, with slight
alterations, are printed in _Week_, p. 366 (Riv. 453), under
the title of "The Poet's Delay."]

[122] [_Walden_, p. 352; Riv. 493.]

[123] [_Week_, p. 383; Riv. 474.]

[124] [_The Service_, p. 15.]

[125] [_Week_, p. 12; Riv. 15.]

[126] [_Week_, p. 17; Riv. 21.]

[127] [T. finally sold this boat to Hawthorne, who changed the
name from Musketaquid to Pond-Lily; and later it passed into
Channing's hands. See Hawthorne's _American Note-Books_, Riv.
pp. 318-321, and Channing, p. 13.]

[128] [_Week_, pp. 12, 13; Riv. 15-17.]

[129] [_Week_, p. 19; Riv. 24.]

[130] [_Week_, p. 37; Riv. 47.]

[131] [_Week_, p. 17; Riv. 21.]

[132] [_Week_, p. 250; Riv. 310, 311.]

[133] [This was Thoreau's first journal, from which he made
the transcripts which are now the only representatives of his
early diarizing. See p. 188, where Journal of 396 pages ends.]

[134] [_Week_, p. 386; Riv. 476.]

[135] [Wordsworth, incorrectly quoted. The line reads,—

"Following his plough, along the mountain-side."]

[136] [_Week_, pp. 44, 45; Riv. 56.]

[137] [_Week_, pp. 37, 38; Riv. 47.]

[138] [_Week_, p. 38; Riv. 47, 48.]

[139] [_Week_, pp. 319, 320; Riv. 395, 396.]

[140] [_Week_, p. 45; Riv. 56, 57.]

[141] [_The Service_, p. 6.]

[142] [_Week_, p. 280; Riv. 347.]

[143] [_Week_, p. 163; Riv. 203.]

[144] [_Week_, p. 45; Riv. 57.]

[145] [_The Service_, p. 14.]

[146] [_Week_, p. 181; Riv. 224, 225.]

[147] [_Week_, pp. 39, 40; Riv. 49, 50.]

[148] [_Week_, p. 304; Riv. 378.]

[149] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv.
35.]

[150] [_The Service_, p. 2.]

[151] [_The Service_, p. 13.]

[152] [_The Service_, p. 24.]

[153] [_Week_, pp. 93, 94; Riv. 116, 117.]

[154] [See p. 104.]

[155] [See p. 106.]

[156] [See p. 106.]

[157] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[158] [_Week_, pp. 384, 385; Riv. 475.]

[159] [_The Service_, pp. 15, 16.]

[160] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[161] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[162] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[163] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[164] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[165] [_The Service_, pp. 25, 26.]

[166] [_The Service_, pp. 21, 22.]

[167] [_The Service_, p. 22.]

[168] [_The Service_, p. 14.]

[169] [_The Service_, p. 12.]

[170] I have heard a strain of music issuing from a soldiers'
camp in the dawn, which sounded like the morning hymn
of creation. The birches rustling in the breeze and the
slumberous breathing of the crickets seemed to hush their
murmuring to attend to it. [Written in pencil on a fly-leaf
of the Journal.]

[171] [_The Service_, p. 7. Mr. Sanborn, in a note to this
passage, says, "The allusion here is to the extraordinary
sight of the gravest citizens of Concord, in that summer
[1840], ... turning out to roll a huge ball, emblematic of
the popular movement against President Van Buren, from the
battle-ground of Concord to that of Bunker Hill, singing as
they rolled:—

'It is the Ball a-rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.'"]

[172] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[173] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 160, 161.]

[174] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[175] [_Excursions_, p. 119; Riv. 146.]

[176] [_The Service_, p. 13.]

[177] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv.
36.]

[178] [_The Service_, pp. 3, 4.]

[179] [_Week_, p. 265; Riv. 329.]

[180] [_Week_, p. 79; Riv. 99. _The Service_, p. 5.]

[181] [_Week_, p. 301; Riv. 374.]

[182] [_The Service_, p. 24.]

[183] [_The Service_, p. 26.]

[184] [_The Service_, p. 23.]

[185] [_The Service_, p. 10.]

[186] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 277; _Misc._, Riv.
36. _The Service_, p. 3.]

[187] [_The Service_, p. 3.]

[188] [_Week_, p. 407; Riv. 502. _The Service_, p. 17.]

[189] [_The Service_, p. 17.]

[190] [_Week_, p. 407; Riv. 502. _The Service_, p. 17.]

[191] [_The Service_, p. 9.]

[192] [The last two sentences appear also in pencil on a
fly-leaf, preceded by, "It sleeps securely within its camp,
not even dreaming of a foe."]

[193] [_Week_, p. 230; Riv. 285.]

[194] [_Week_, p. 229; Riv. 284, 285.]

[195] [_Week_, p. 229; Riv. 285. See also p. 124 of this
volume.]

[196] [_Excursions_, p. 106; Riv. 131.]

[197] [See _Excursions_, p. 110; Riv. 135.]

[198] [_Week_, p. 315; Riv. 390, 391. See also below.]

[199] [See above.]

[200] [_Week_, p. 304; Riv. 377, 378. See also p. 205.]

[201] _Excursions_, p. 117; Riv. 144.

[202] [_Excursions_, p. 117; Riv. 144.]

[203] [_Excursions_, pp. 117, 118; Riv. 144, 145.]

[204] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[205] [See Emerson's Journal (1841), quoted in E. W. Emerson's
_Emerson in Concord_, p. 99.]

[206] [_Walden_, p. 28; Riv. 43.]

[207] [_Week_, p. 415; Riv. 512.]

[208] [See p. 214,—bronchitis!]

[209] [_Excursions_, p. 167; Riv. 203, 204.]

[210] [_Excursions_, p. 173; Riv. 211.]

[211] [_Week_, p. 289; Riv. 359.]

[212] [See p. 180.]

[213] [_Week_, p. 236; Riv. 293.]

[214] [_Week_, p. 50; Riv. 63.]

[215] [_Week_, p. 305; Riv. 379.]

[216] [_Week_, p. 406; Riv. 501.]

[217] [_Excursions_, p. 182; Riv. 222.]

[218] [_Week_, p. 288; Riv. 358.]

[219] [See his sister's account of his last sickness in
Sanborn's _Thoreau_, pp. 310-313.]

[220] [_Week_, p. 106; Riv. 132.]

[221] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 195.]

[222] [_Excursions_, p. 182; Riv. 223.]

[223] [See _Week_, p. 45; Riv. 57.]

[224] [_Week_, p. 40; Riv. 50.]

[225] [An interpretation of Emerson's poem. The numbers refer
to the stanzas.]

[226] [The italics are Thoreau's.]

[227] [_Week_, pp. 111, 112; Riv. 138-140.]

[228] [_Week_, p. 108; Riv. 134.]

[229] [_Week_, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

[230] [_Week_, p. 283; Riv. 351.]

[231] [See p. 299.]

[232] [_Walden_, p. 25; Riv. 39.]

[233] [_Week_, p. 54; Riv. 67, 68.]

[234] [See _Week_, p. 131; Riv. 163.]

[235] [_Week_, p. 131; Riv. 163.]

[236] [_Week_, p. 129; Riv. 161.]

[237] [_Week_, pp. 318, 319; Riv. 395. Tree sparrow = chipping
sparrow? The "hair-bird" of _Week_, p. 317 (Riv. 393), is
called tree sparrow in the commonplace-book referred to on p.
438.]

[238] [Field sparrow, Nuttall's _Fringilla juncorum_. Nuttall
gives both field sparrow and rush sparrow as its vernacular
names.]

[239] [_Week_, p. 336; Riv. 416.]

[240] [_Week_, p. 336; Riv. 416.]

[241] [_Week_, p. 54; Riv. 67.]

[242] [In _Excursions_, p. 135 (Riv. 165), these lines are
printed as part of a poem beginning, "With frontier strength
ye stand your ground." The poem appears also, in extended
form, in _Week_, pp. 170-173; Riv. 212-215.]

[243] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 164.]

[244] [_Week_, p. 132; Riv. 164.]

[245] [_Excursions_, p. 133; Riv. 163.]

[246] [This poem appears in _Week_, p. 50 (Riv. 62), with some
variations and without title.]

[247] [_Walden_, p. 354; Riv. 496.]

[248] [See _Week_, p. 154; Riv. 192.]

[249] [_Week_, p. 140; Riv. 174, 175.]

[250] [See pp. 124 and 174.]

[251] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[252] [_Week_, p. 12; Riv. 15.]

[253] [_Week_, p. 394; Riv. 486.]

[254] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[255] [_Week_, p. 109; Riv. 136.]

[256] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 195, 196.]

[257] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 195.]

[258] [_Week_, pp. 161-163; Riv. 200-204.]

[259] [_Excursions_, p. 148; Riv. 181.]

[260] [_Week_, p. 339; Riv. 419. The "double spruce" is now
generally known as the black spruce. Thoreau makes it "single
spruce" (_i. e._, white spruce) in the book, but the tree he
was familiar with was the black. He confused these two species
for a time, but eventually discovered his error.]

[261] [_Excursions_, pp. 125, 126; Riv. 154, 155.]

[262] [_Week_, p. 363; Riv. 449.]

[263] [_Week_, p. 56; Riv. 70.]

[264] [_Week_, p. 341; Riv. 422.]

[265] [_Week_, p. 229; Riv. 284.]

[266] [_Week_, p. 341; Riv. 421, 422.]

[267] [_Week_, p. 353; Riv. 436, 437.]

[268] [_Week_, p. 363; Riv. 450.]

[269] [_Week_, p. 365; Riv. 453.]

[270] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 198.]

[271] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 199.]

[272] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 194.]

[273] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[274] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 194.]

[275] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 195.]

[276] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 198.]

[277] [_Week_, p. 402; Riv. 496.]

[278] [_Week_, p. 159; Riv. 198.]

[279] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 194.]

[280] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 195.]

[281] [_Week_, p. 358; Riv. 443.]

[282] [_Week_, p. 155; Riv. 193.]

[283] [_Excursions_, p. 119; Riv. 146, 147.]

[284] [_Excursions_, pp. 331, 332; Riv. 408.]

[285] [_Week_, p. 358; Riv. 443.]

[286] [_Week_, p. 48; Riv. 60.]

[287] [_Week_, p. 393; Riv. 486.]

[288] [_Week_, pp. 393, 394; Riv. 486.]

[289] [_Week_, p. 394; Riv. 486.]

[290] [_Week_, p. 111; Riv. 138.]

[291] [See p. 213 for the possible origin of this figure.]

[292] [On the back lining-page of the manuscript Journal
volume which ends with this date are the following sentences
in pencil:

There is another young day let loose to roam the earth.

Happiness is very unprofitable stock.

The love which is preached nowadays is an ocean of new milk
for a man to swim in. I hear no surf nor surge, but the winds
coo over it.]

[293] [See _Week_, pp. xx, xxi; _Misc._, Riv. 8, 9 (Emerson's
Biographical Sketch of Thoreau).]

[294] [_Week_, p. 291; Riv. 361.]

[295] [_Week_, p. 363; Riv. 450.]

[296] [_Week_, p. 395; Riv. 488.]

[297] [_Week_, p. 395; Riv. 488.]

[298] [This poem, with the four additional stanzas of the
next date, appears in the _Week_, pp. 313, 314 (Riv. 388, 389)
under the title of "The Inward Morning." The second stanza is
there omitted and there are other alterations.]

[299] [_Familiar Letters_, Sept., 1852.]

[300] [See p. 347.]

[301] [_Week_, p. 373; Riv. 461.]

[302] [_Week_, p. 54; Riv. 67.]

[303] [_Excursions_, p. 174; Riv. 212.]

[304] [Written in pencil on a fly-leaf of the Journal:] A man
might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of
nature by being buried in it.

[305] [Channing, p. 241.]

[306] [See p. 244.]

[307] [_Excursions_, p. 173; Riv. 212.]

[308] [_Week_, p. 314; Riv. 389.]

[309] [_Week_, p. 133; Riv. 166.]

[310] [_Week_, p. 280; Riv. 347.]

[311] [_Week_, p. 314; Riv. 390.]

[312] [_Week_, p. 384; Riv. 474.]

[313] [_Week_, p. 396; Riv. 489.]

[314] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490.]

[315] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 491.]

[316] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490.]

[317] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 491, 492.]

[318] [_Excursions_, pp. 103, 104; Riv. 127, 128.]

[319] [_Excursions_, pp. 103-105; Riv. 127-129.]

[320] [_Week_, p. 362; Riv. 449.]

[321] [_Excursions_, p. 105; Riv. 129, 130.]

[322] [_Week_, pp. 77, 78; Riv. 96, 97.]

[323] [_Week_, p. 396; Riv. 489.]

[324] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 492.]

[325] [_Week_, p. 396; Riv. 489, 490.]

[326] [_Week_, pp. 237, 238; Riv. 294, 295.]

[327] [_Week_, pp. 108-110; Riv. 134-136.]

[328] [_Week_, p. 110; Riv. 136, 137.]

[329] [_Excursions_, p. 104; Riv. 128.]

[330] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[331] [_Week_, p. 182; Riv. 226.]

[332] [_Week_, p. 183; Riv. 227.]

[333] [It was about a year after the date of this entry that
Richard F. Fuller made Thoreau a present of a music-box (see
_Familiar Letters_, March 2, 1842, and Jan. 16 and 24, 1843),
which a few months later, on departing for Staten Island, he
lent to Hawthorne (_American Note-Books_, Riv. pp. 333, 338).]

[334] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[335] [_Week_, p. 184; Riv. 228.]

[336] [_Week_, p. 303; Riv. 377.]

[337] [Thoreau's brother John died Jan. 11, 1842.]

[338] [Two lines missing from the manuscript here.]

[339] [_Week_, p. 398; Riv. 492.]

[340] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490.]

[341] [_Week_, p. 288; Riv. 357.]

[342] [_Week_, p. 288; Riv. 358.]

[343] [At the head of this paragraph appears the following in
pencil:

What has music to do with the lives of the Great Composers? It
is the great composer who is not yet dead whose life should
be written. Shall we presume to write such a history as the
former while the winds blow?]

[344] [_Week_, pp. 398, 399; Riv. 492.]

[345] [_Week_, p. 303; Riv. 377.]

[346] [_Week_, pp. 397, 398; Riv. 491.]

[347] [_Week_, pp. 397, 398; Riv. 491, 492.]

[348] [_Week_, p. 156; Riv. 195.]

[349] [_Week_, p. 157; Riv. 196.]

[350] [_Week_, pp. 339, 340; Riv. 420.]

[351] [_Week_, p. 138; Riv. 172, 173.]

[352] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 336; _Misc._, Riv.
106, 107.]

[353] [See pp. 443, 444.]

[354] [See _Journal_, vol. ii, p. 128.]

[355] [_Week_, p. 283; Riv. 351.]

[356] [_Week_, pp. 130, 131; Riv. 163.]

[357] Set the red hen, Sunday, March 21st [=20th]. [This
memorandum is written in the margin. It is pretty good proof
that by now we have come to the original Journal. Just where
the transcripts end, however, it seems to be impossible to
determine.]

[358] [_Week_, p. 107; Riv. 133.]

[359] [_Week_, p. 130; Riv. 162.]

[360] [_Week_, p. 160; Riv. 199.]

[361] [_Week_, p. 109; Riv. 135, 136.]

[362] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[363] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[364] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[365] [_Week_, p. 105; Riv. 130.]

[366] [_Week_, p. 153; Riv. 191.]

[367] [See pp. 295, 296.]

[368] [_Week_, p. 137; Riv. 170.]

[369] [_Week_, p. 301; Riv. 374, 375.]

[370] [_Week_, p. 351; Riv. 434.]

[371] [_Week_, p. 130; Riv. 163.]

[372] [In _Excursions_, p. 110 (Riv. 136), what appears to be
the same bird is described, and is called the fish hawk.]

[373] [_Week_, pp. 105, 106; Riv. 131, 132.]

[374] [_Week_, pp. 34, 35; Riv. 42, 43.]

[375] [_Excursions_, p. 110; Riv. 136.]

[376] [_Week_, p. 110; Riv. 137.]

[377] [On the margin of this page appears the memorandum: "Set
the gray hen April 1st."]

[378] [_Week_, p. 397; Riv. 490, 491.]

[379] [_Excursions_, p. 111; Riv. 137.]

[380] [_Walden_, p. 94; Riv. 134.]

[381] [_Walden_, p. 106; Riv. 150.]

[382] [_Walden_, pp. 171, 172; Riv. 242.]

[383] [_Walden_, p. 145; Riv. 205.]

[384] [_Walden_, pp. 145, 146; Riv. 206.]

[385] [Plainly "neat" in Journal, though _Walden_ has
"great."]

[386] [_Walden_, pp. 159, 160; Riv. 224, 225.]

[387] [_Walden_, p. 161; Riv. 227.]

[388] [_Walden_, pp. 12, 13; Riv. 21.]

[389] [_Walden_, p. 39; Riv. 59.]

[390] [_Walden_, p. 41; Riv. 61.]

[391] [_Walden_, p. 41; Riv. 61.]

[392] [_Walden_, p. 309; Riv. 433.]

[393] [_Walden_, p. 250; Riv. 351.]

[394] [_Walden_, pp. 112-114; Riv. 159-161.]

[395] [_Walden_, p. 114; Riv. 162.]

[396] [See _Excursions_, p. 295; Riv. 362.]

[397] [Eight lines, somewhat altered, _Week_, pp. 407, 408;
Riv. 503.]

[398] [_Week_, p. 407; Riv. 503.]

[399] [By Eliot Warburton, London, 1844, and New York, 1845.]

[400] [_Week_, pp. 266, 267; Riv. 331.]

[401] [_Week_, pp. 266, 267; Riv. 330-332.]

[402] [_Walden_, p. 111; Riv. 157, 158.]

[403] [_Walden_, p. 127; Riv. 179, 180.]

[404] [_Walden_, pp. 137, 138; Riv. 194-196.]

[405] [_Walden_, pp. 139, 140; Riv. 197, 198.]

[406] [_Walden_, p. 242, where he makes his age four instead
of five at the time of this early visit.]

[407] [_Walden_, p. 139; Riv. 197.]

[408] [_Walden_, p. 181; Riv. 255.]

[409] [_Walden_, p. 182; Riv. 256.]

[410] [_The Legend of Good Women_, ll. 1218, 1219.]

[411] [_Walden_, pp. 225-227, 229, 231; Riv. 317-320, 322,
325, 326.]

[412] [_Walden_, p. 232; Riv. 327.]

[413] [_Walden_, pp. 230, 231; Riv. 323-325.]

[414] [See _Walden_, pp. 271, 272; Riv. 380, 381.]

[415] [_Walden_, p. 44; Riv. 65, 66.]

[416] [_Walden_, pp. 32, 33; Riv. 48, 49.]

[417] [_Walden_, pp. 33, 34; Riv. 50, 51.]

[418] [_Walden_, pp. 37, 38; Riv. 56.]

[419] [_Walden_, p. 34; Riv. 51, 52.]

[420] [_Walden_, p. 35; Riv. 53.]

[421] [_Walden_, p. 36; Riv. 55.]

[422] [_Walden_, p. 39; Riv. 58.]

[423] [_Week_, p. 264; Riv. 328.]

[424] [_Week_, p. 65; Riv. 81.]

[425] [_Week_, p. 58; Riv. 72.]

[426] [_Week_, p. 61; Riv. 76.]

[427] [_Week_, p. 136; Riv. 169.]

[428] [_Week_, p. 58; Riv. 72, 73.]

[429] [_Week_, p. 57; Riv. 72.]

[430] [_Walden_, p. 275; Riv. 386.]

[431] [_Walden_, p. 275; Riv. 386.]

[432] [_Walden_, p. 4; Riv. 9.]

[433] [_Walden_, p. 7; Riv. 12, 13.]

[434] [_Walden_, p. 301; Riv. 422.]

[435] [See _Journal_, vol. vii, Feb. 1, 1855.]

[436] [_Walden_, pp. 12, 13; Riv. 21.]

[437] [_Walden_, p. 306; Riv. 429.]

[438] [_Walden_, p. 162; Riv. 228.]

[439] [_Walden_, p. 304; Riv. 426.]

[440] [_Walden_, pp. 344, 345; Riv. 481, 482.]

[441] [_Walden_, pp. 183, 184; Riv. 258, 259.]

[442] [_Walden_, p. 345; Riv. 482.]

[443] [_Walden_, p. 345; Riv. 482, 483.]

[444] [Twenty-six lines of this, somewhat revised, appear
under the title of "Pilgrims" in _Excursions, and Poems_, p.
413.]

[445] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 352, 353; _Misc._,
Riv. 127, 128.]

[446] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 344; _Misc._, Riv.
116, 117.]

[447] [_Walden_, pp. 288, 289; Riv. 405.]

[448] [_Walden_, p. 289; Riv. 405, 406.]

[449] [_Walden_, pp. 24, 26; Riv. 36, 40.]

[450] [_Walden_, p. 24; Riv. 37.]

[451] [_Walden_, p. 25; Riv. 38.]

[452] [_Walden_, p. 25; Riv. 38, 39.]

[453] [_Walden_, pp. 283, 284, 287, 288; Riv. 397-400, 404.]

[454] [_Walden_, pp. 289-291; Riv. 406-408.]

[455] [_Walden_, pp. 282, 283; Riv. 396, 397.]

[456] [_Walden_, pp. 258, 259; Riv. 363, 364.]

[457] [_Walden_, p. 345; Riv. 483.]

[458] [_Walden_, p. 262; Riv. 368.]

[459] [_Walden_, p. 259; Riv. 364.]

[460] [_Walden_, p. 305; Riv. 428.]

[461] ["Hilda" was originally written where "Nutting" appears
on p. 420.]

[462] [_Walden_, p. 292; Riv. 408, 409.]

[463] [_Walden_, pp. 323, 324; Riv. 452, 453.]

[464] [_Walden_, p. 313; Riv. 438.]

[465] [_Walden_, pp. 289, 290; Riv. 406, 407.]

[466] [_Walden_, p. 285; Riv. 400.]

[467] [See _Week_, p. 102; Riv. 127.]

[468] [_Walden_, p. 280; Riv. 392, 393.]

[469] [_Walden_, p. 309; Riv. 434.]

[470] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, pp. 325-327; _Misc._,
Riv. 93-95 ("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[471] [_Walden_, pp. 4, 5; Riv. 9, 10.]

[472] [_Walden_, pp. 6, 8; Riv. 11, 14.]

[473] [_Walden_, p. 8; Riv. 14, 15.]

[474] [_Walden_, pp. 5, 6; Riv. 10, 11.]

[475] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 327; _Misc._, Riv. 95
("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[476] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 325; _Misc._, Riv. 93
("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[477] [_Walden_, pp. 283-285, 287, 288; Riv. 397-400, 404.]

[478] [_Walden_, pp. 68, 69; Riv. 99, 100.]

[479] [_Cape Cod, and Miscellanies_, p. 348; _Misc._, Riv.
121 ("Thomas Carlyle and his Works").]

[480] [_Walden_, p. 296; Riv. 415, 416.]

[481] [_Walden_, p. 296; Riv. 415.]

[482] [_Walden_, p. 310; Riv. 434, 435.]

[483] [_Walden_, pp. 19-21; Riv. 30-33.]

[484] [_Walden_, p. 12; Riv. 19, 20.]

[485] [_Walden_, p. 12; Riv. 20.]

[486] [_Week_, p. 45; Riv. 57.]

[487] [This follows matter used on p. 81 of _Week_ (Riv.
101).]

[488] [The boatman's. See _Week_, p. 222; Riv. 276.]

[489] [See p. 337.]

[490] [This and the succeeding paragraphs on the Indian were
written in pencil on loose sheets of paper and slipped between
the pages of the Journal.]

[491] [See _Week_, pp. 286, 287; Riv. 356.]

[492] _Vide_ the Fall of the Leaf poem. [This note is written
in pencil between this line and the following stanza. The poem
referred to is reprinted (without these lines) in _Excursions,
and Poems_, p. 407.]

[493] [This refers to the middle of September and follows
matter used in _Week_, on p. 357 (Riv. 443).]

[494] [_Week_, p. 387; Riv. 478.]

[495] [_Week_, p. 133; Riv. 166.]

[496] [The first four lines of a poem the rest of which
appears on pp. 234, 235 of _Week_ (Riv. 290, 291).]

[497] [This poem appears, slightly abridged and altered, in
_Week_, p. 201 (Riv. 249).]

[498] [There is a blank space here before "musty," as if
Thoreau had sought another adjective to go with it.]

[499] [See _Excursions_, p. 208; Riv. 255.]

[500] [_Week_, p. 377; Riv. 465.]

[501] [_Week_, p. 302; Riv. 375.]

[502] [_Week_, p. 302; Riv. 375.]

[503] [See _Week_, pp. 33, 34; Riv. 41, 42.]

[504] [This appears in pencil on a loose sheet of paper
inclosed between the pages of the Journal.]

[505] [_Excursions, and Poems_, p. 409. See also p. 71.]

[506] [Here follows matter printed on pp. 105, 106 of _Week_
(Riv. 130-132).]

[507] [See _Journal_, vol. vi, Feb. 5, 1854.]

[508] [See _Walden_, pp. 120, 121; Riv. 171, 172.]

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume VII (of 20) - Journal I, 1837-1846" ***

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