# The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906)/Volume 7/Chapter 2

Layout 2
II
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!"
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.
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 live-long 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.
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."
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 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.
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!
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.
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!
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."
​E'en in old Homer's day was honey sweet,—not yet is sour,—tickling the palate of the blind old man, for sooth, 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?
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-tari 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 ἄνθρώπος, 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 Philanders 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.
April 8.
FRIENDSHIP
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.
April 26.
THE BLUEBIRDS
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 't were 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.
'T was 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 debut 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 21.
MAY MORNING
The school-boy loitered on his way to school, Scorning to live so rare a day by rule. So mild the air a pleasure 't was 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.
June 3.
WALDEN
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, 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.
July 8.
CLIFFS
The loudest sound that burdens here the breeze Is the wood's whisper; 't is, 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.
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 day light 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.
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 far thest 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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oct. 16.
MY BOOTS
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.
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."
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 in visible 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.
Dec. 15.
FAIR HAVEN
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
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 masonwork; 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
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
Dec. 23.
RETURN OF SPRING
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
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.
* ↑ [Excursions, p. 141; Riv. 173.]
* ↑ [Excursions, p. 127; Riv. 156.]
* ↑ [Excursions, p. 112; Riv. 138.]
* ↑ [Week, pp. 347, 348; Riv. 429-431.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 66; Riv. 82, 83.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 66; Riv. 83.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 96; Riv. 119, 120.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 65; Riv. 81.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 96; Riv. 120.]
* ↑ ["Carlyleish" is written in the margin against this passage.]
* ↑ [The word seems to be a new one, but its meaning is clear.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 129; Riv. 161.]
* ↑ [Excursions, p. 108; Riv. 133.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 78; Riv. 97.]
* ↑ [Week, pp. 94, 95; Riv. 117, 119.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 79; Riv. 98, 99. The Service, p. 4.]
* ↑ [Week, pp. 9-11; Riv. 11, 13.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 96; Riv. 120.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 319; Riv. 395.]
* ↑ [See Week, p. 95 (Riv. 118), where the passages referred to appear in translation.]
* ↑ [Excursions, pp. 181, 182; Riv. 221, 222.]
* ↑ [All but the last stanza, somewhat revised and without title, appears in Excursions, pp. 176, 177; Riv. 215, 216.]
* ↑ [Cf. Week, pp. 417-420; Riv. 515-518.]
* ↑ [Excursions, p. 108; Riv. 133. "Drinking" for "Sipping" in l. 3 is the only change.]
* ↑ [Excursions, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 135.]
* ↑ [Week, p. 244 ; Riv. 302. Lines 2 and 3 are altered.]
* ↑ [Excursions, p. 112; Riv. 138.]