Spring
regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of the
was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the
with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of
garment to take the place of the old. This pond never breaks up so
exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the
nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor,
wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like
night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and
top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our winter
cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. Ah! I have
the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins.
of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for
all alive and covered with papillae. The largest pond is as
sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its
bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain
bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical
the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the
startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like
who made the world and me -- had come to where he was still at work,
singularly grand and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard,
dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b
water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer
As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the
On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear
it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is
and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the under side of
three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water
from his gnarled rind and try another years life, tender and fresh
very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes
on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe --
many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were
snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before.
primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been
a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were
ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly
beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love
disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on
brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy
and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to
laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a
globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass
ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days
water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off
Thus was my first years life in the woods completed; and the
partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow,
Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing
neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and
supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts
One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should
side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more
Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its
white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his
and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as
The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather,
on the hillsides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I
of the potter.
word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of
and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I
. . . . . . .
contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive
expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born
which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a
muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The
been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material
like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only
a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten
again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and
and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height
"The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathean kingdom,
come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with
The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a
was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote
overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked
into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me
When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the
long before. The phoebe had already come once more and looked in at
winter -- life-everlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and graceful wild
could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express
are reminded of coral, of leopards paws or birds feet, of brains
gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal
light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy
vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the
excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the
pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is
Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright
memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly
green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter
to all.
surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any
the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burning-glasses to
whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl
like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and
At length the suns rays have attained the right angle, and warm
pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and
and there is no end to the heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as if
migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle pehttp://www•99lib•netrsuasion
ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the
into a myriad of others. You here see perchance how blood-vessels
whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a
our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we
thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. There was
yellow but green is the color of its flame; -- the symbol of
from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon
cold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flints Pond to
earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum
The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger
world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is
impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one
men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among
the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer
"Eurus ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regna recessit,
suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so
another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out
spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to
meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds
shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly
head, with its lobe or drop. The lip -- labium, from labor (?) --
and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder every evening,
disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast.
village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though
she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The
saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I
which precede flowers and fruit -- not a fossil earth, but a living
felled. In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a
the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said,
drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly
recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot
flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their
song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore -- olit, olit,
call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already
in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually
Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and
into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32x,
from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body
spring. In a pleasant spring morning all mens sins are forgiven.
Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn,
proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break
of June, when the rills are dry, the grass-blades are their
and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great
life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we
many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for
fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions,
of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it,
hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be
on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The
patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic
so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the
"After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times
of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but
honeycomb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right
evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none
seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of
leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening
but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent
looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile,
Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the
the bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through
what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The
dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or
heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood
ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and
more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but
or freezing point; near the shore at 33x; in the middle of Flints
when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong
between them -- that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and
morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again
(single lobed, or B, double lobed), with the liquid l behind it
Summer.
the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a
lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and
graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple
at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. In
semi-cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad,
with the golden dust of the lotus." And so the seasons went rolling
that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity.
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So
Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along
ripple marks on the bottom.
my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for
itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing
The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger.
1847.
of invective that was irresistible.
pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the
unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic
ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the
my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so
the 1st of April; in 46, the 25th of March; in 47, the 8th of
equilibrium of nature.
than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are
quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird,
pewee, the chewink, and other b99lib•netirds. I had heard the wood thrush
by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally,
in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and
in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over
still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they
unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and
siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was
strong-stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain
April; in 51, the 28th of March; in 52, the 18th of April; in 53,
the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style, older
stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have
their amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up
it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and
inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag
of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its
the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze.
The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is
running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost
shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy
tube.
for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon
been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no
deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the
be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of
Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms
dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint
the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not
is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the
river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking
which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers
small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water
The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a
natural sentiments of man?"
are formed. If you look closely you observe that first there pushes
does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening
with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and
settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in haste and
wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a
beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the
day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again
in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already in
now some cliffy cloud.
pushing on again, lifting its spear of last years hay with the
fires its evening gun with great regularity. But in the middle of
pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when I
vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character,
putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a
told me -- and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of
weary travellers getting in late from Southern lakes, and indulging
iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing
cloud, woven of the rainbows trimmings and the sunset sky, and
memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which,
tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has
rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going
fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes
poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and
have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in. The ice in
and of the sands on its shore -- a silvery sheen as from the scales
designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the
Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another,
clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the
had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first
fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many
days later than Flints Pond and Fair Haven, beginning to melt on
out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the
would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited
as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands
fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the
Pond, the same day, at 32+x; at a dozen rods from the shore, in
been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a
leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a
forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot
of existence like pulp -- tadpoles which herons gobble up, and
beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then
stereotyped.
sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy
the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least
peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white
the judge does not dismis his case -- why the preacher does not
that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there
commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the
To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,
For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some
bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely
through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom
had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to
that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like
the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence
muddier pools. A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took
this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads
soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What
directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which
of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the
us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days
tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It took a short
how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a
ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn
future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave
from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a
but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting
the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore --
grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer
merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the
solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and
angles with what was the water surface. Where there is a rock or a
the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic,
influences would have caused it to flow yet farther.
at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up
temperature. A severe cold of a few days duration in March may very
as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist
sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when
the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes
two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing,
observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and
springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side
Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis."
our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should
the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but
the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the
as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his
dont -- chickaree -- chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my
perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams
lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry
way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling
shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36x. This difference of
melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in
of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the
crevice of a crag; -- or was its native nest made in the angle of a
completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single
stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and
are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the
destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to
other but breaks in pieces.
out the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay
up so much sooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was
externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and
A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a
the suns rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched
withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of the weather a pond
tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of
the inert bank -- for the sun acts on one side first -- and on the
which they are bearing off.
ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full
fat (jnai, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing;
midwinter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in
Even in Calidas drama of Sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow
shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and
nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter
of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk
material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel.
days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly
about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but
second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,
realization of the Golden Age.--
though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still
In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the
appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for
we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your
vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst
little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near
her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if
exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of
the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and I can set my heel
next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it
suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We
rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter
large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the
lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The
stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a
laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you
could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig.
door, and passed my first spring night in the woods.
It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress
root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so
unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of
after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable
bird, or the striped squirrels chirp, for his stores must be now
sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the
are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous
This at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch pines and
flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the
strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about
I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for
exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them
log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and
There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which
the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it
spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake
of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust
in shallow water, and so also九_九_藏_书_网 warms the water and melts the under
respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No, you
channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial
the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey
and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal
of the season, being least affected by transient changes of
water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it
is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of
the earliest birds -- decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature
manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger
rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see
or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly
horizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for
grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in
Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors -- why
even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass,
victory, then?
does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man
lay her keel -- who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire
with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and
pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had
it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands
antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree,
winter, not excepting that of 52-3, which gave the ponds so severe
Fair Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most
the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire
soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its
of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the
the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end.
"The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger
sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the
And mortals knew no shores but their own.
greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or
reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this
ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and
sporting there alone -- and to need none but the morning and the
away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it
thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the
await them. The ice was melted for three or four rods from the
collected a barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we bear of.
When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days
On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the
latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within
may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who would have
from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in
would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the
from developing themselves and destroys them.
as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants have
directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial
from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by
he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to
tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately
currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the
resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more
in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not
"A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and
The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed;
Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read
penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring
kindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it
compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night
part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was
made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more
can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one
This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It
does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature
instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house,
and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow,
the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song
the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different
is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in
possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and
new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy,
from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening
-- "et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata" -- as if
the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the
instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no
thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces
could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the
ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be
melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how
There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm
At the approach of spring the red squirrels got under my house,
day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow
wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the
more of natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah --
the spring. The marsh hawk, sailing low over the meadow, is already
vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our
forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a
expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea
builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the
than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves;
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended
flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you
there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the
its wings, which 九九藏书网gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the
mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large
other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected
to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of
rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce
not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks,
at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing
many a thousand more -- the same sweet and powerful song as of yore.
precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular
rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play
earth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its
first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving
close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a
and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they
and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for
earth. One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and
seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she
drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide
an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth
Natures operations, for I thought that there were no secrets
of wildness -- to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and
rain. I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell by
pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to
mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out
is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be
O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays.
the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have
pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even
and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a
hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the
of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The
jiais, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words);
seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the
or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the
arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain
and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere
to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the
of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never
can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the
grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular
middle was merely honeycombed and saturated with water, so that you
sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh
Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven."
winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves,
winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun,
every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the
all things, we require that all things be mysterious and
the 23d of March; in 54, about the 7th of April.
fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the
name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did
forth its green blade to eternity.
swaddling-clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side.
earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and
. . . . . . .
when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine
all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to
again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.
is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is
it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is
olit -- chip, chip, chip, che char -- che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too
ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to
Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high
around, or as if I had struck on a tight drum-head. The pond began
Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain
toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed
indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.
at my door, I could bear the rush of their wings; when, driving
freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some
spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice
Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things,
melt the ice beneath.
wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous
yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best
is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat; and I have
song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick.
the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new
dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and
Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just
Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle
earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed."
influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend
before it came to a standstill.
with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods
was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors,
ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a
much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature
and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him
inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant
cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other
whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was
begins to rot or "comb," that is, assume the appearance of
transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But
erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the