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22 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau · Logic Library

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Chapter seventeen. Spring. The opening of large tracts by the ice cutters commonly
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causes a pond to break up earlier, for the water, agitated by the
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wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such
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was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a
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thick new garment to take the place of the old. This pond never breaks
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up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its
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greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away
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the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter,
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not excepting that of fifty two fifty three, which gave the pond so
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severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week
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or ten days later than Flint's pond, and beginning to melt on the north
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side, and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates
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better than any water hereabouts, the absolute progress of the season, being least
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affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days duration
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in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the
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temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden
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on the sixth of March eighteen forty seven, stood at thirty two degrees or
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freezing point near the shore at thirty three degrees. In the middle of Flint's
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Pond the same day at thirty two plus degrees at a dozen rods from the
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shore, in shallow water under ice a foot thick at thirty six degrees.
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This difference of three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water
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and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion
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of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner
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than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches
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thinner than in the middle. In midwinter, the middle had been the warmest
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and the ice thinnest. There So also every one who has waded about the
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shores of the pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is
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close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, then a
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little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep than near the
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bottom. In spring, the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased
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temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot
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or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and
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so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice at the
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same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven,
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and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward,
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until it is comparatively honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring
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rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake
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begins to rot or comb, that is, assume the appearance of honeycomb,
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whatever may be its position. The air cells are at right angles with what
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was the water surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising near
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to the surface. The ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently
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quite dissolved by this reflected heat. And I have been told that in the
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experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond through the cold air
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circulating underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the
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sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain in
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the middle of the winter melts off the snow ice from walden and leaves a
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hard, dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip
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of rotten, though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide about the
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shores created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said, the
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bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burning glasses to melt the ice beneath.
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The phenomena of the year take place every day in pond on a small scale.
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Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly
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than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all,
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and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day
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is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning
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and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.
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The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant
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morning after a cold night February twenty fourth, eighteen fifty, having gone to
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Flint's Pond to spend the day, I noticed with surprise that when I struck
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the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for
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many rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight drumhead.
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The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the
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influence of the sun's rays slanted upon it from over the hills. It stretched
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itself and yawned like a waking man, with a gradually increasing tumult, which
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was kept up three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon,
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and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing its influence.
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In the right stage of the weather, a pond fires its evening gun
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with great regularity, But in the middle of the day, being full of
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cracks and the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance,
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and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow
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on it. The fishermen say that the thundering of the pond scared the fishes
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and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder every evening, and I
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cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering. But though I may perceive no
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difference in the weather, it does. Who would have suspected so large and
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cold and thick skinned. A thing to be so sensitive, yet it has
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its law to which it thunders obedience when it should, as surely as the
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buds expand. In the spring, the earth is all alive and covered with
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papillae. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of
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mercury in its tube. One attraction in coming to the woods to live was
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that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. The
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ice in the pond at length begins to be honeycom and I can set my
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heel in it. As I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are
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gradually melting the snow. The days have grown sensibly longer, and I see
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how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood pile, for
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large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first
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signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird. Why
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the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, Or
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see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the thirteenth of March,
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after I had heard the blue bird song sparrow and red wing. The
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ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer. It
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was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off
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as in rivers. But though it was completely melted for half a rod in
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width about the shore, the middle was merely honeycombed and saturated with water,
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so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick. But
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by the next day evening, perhaps after a warm rain followed by fog,
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it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off, with the fog spirited away.
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One year, I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared
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entirely in eighteen forty five. Walden was first comparatively open on the first of
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April in forty six, the twenty fifth of March in forty seven, the
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eighth of April in fifty one, the twenty eighth of March in fifty two,
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the eighteenth of April in fifty three, the twenty third of March in
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fifty four, about the seventh of April. Every incident connected with the breaking
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up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting
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to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer
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days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night
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with a startling whoop, as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters
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were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly
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going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the
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earth. One old man who has been a close observer of nature, and
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seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations, as if she had
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been put upon on the stalks when he was a boy he had helped to
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lay her keel, who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire
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more of natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah told me,
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And I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of nature's operations,
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for I thought that there were no secrets between them. That one spring
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day he took his gun and boat and thought that he would have a little
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sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the meadows, but it
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was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from
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Sudbury, where he lived to fair Haven Pond, which he found unexpectedly covered
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for the most part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm
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day, and he was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining.
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Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back
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side of an island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes
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on the south side to await them. The ice was melted for three or
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four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of
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water with a muddy bottom such as the duck's love within, and he thought
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it likely that some would be along pretty soon after he had lain still there
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about an hour, he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but
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singularly grand and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard, gradually swelling and
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increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush
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and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a
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vast body of fowl coming in to settle there. And seizing his gun,
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he started up in haste and excited, but he found his surprise that the
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whole body of the ice had started while he lay there and drifted into the
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shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on
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the shore, at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving
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up and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height, before it
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came to a standstill. At length, the sun's rays have attained the right
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angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks,
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and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of
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russet and white, smoking with incense, through which the traveler picks his way
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from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and
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rivulets, whose veins are filled with the blood of winter, which they are
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bearing off. Few phenomena gave me more delight to observe the forms which thawing
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sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the
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railroad through which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not
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very common on so large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks
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of the right material must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The
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material was sand, of every degree of fineness and of rich colors, commonly
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mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring,
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and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow
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down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it
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where no sand was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace
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one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product which obeys half way the
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law of currents and half way that of vegetation. As it flows, it
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takes the form of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays of
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foot or more in depth, and resembling as you look down on them,
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the laciniated, lobed and imbricated thalluses of some lichens, or you are reminded
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of coral, of leopard's paws or birds, feats of brains or lungs or
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bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation whose
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form and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more
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ancient and typical than acanthus, chicken, ivy vine, or any vegetable leaves
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destined, perhaps under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists.
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The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave, with its stalactites
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laid open to the light. The various shades of the sand are singularly rich
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and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors brown, gray, yellowish, and
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reddish. When the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank,
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it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their semi cylindrical
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form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more
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moist till they form an almost flat sand, still variously beautifully shaded, but
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in which you can trace the are digional forms of vegetation. Till at length
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in the water itself they are converted into banks, like those formed off the
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mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost, and the ripple
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marks on the bottom. The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty
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feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage or
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sandy rupture for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the
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produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing
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into existence. Thus, suddenly, when I see on the one side the
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inert bank, for the sun acts on one side first, and on the
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other this luxuriant foliage and the creation of an hour, I am affected,
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as if in a peculiar sense, I stood in the laboratory of the artist
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who made the world, and me had come to where he was still at
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work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy, strewing his
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fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of
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the globe. For this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the
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vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation
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of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves.
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It so labors the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law
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and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype internally,
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whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist, thick lobe
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a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat Jenni
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labor lapsus to flow or slip downward, a lapsing jius globus, lobe,
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a globe, also lap flap, and other words externally a dry thin leaf.
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Even as the F and V are oppressed and dried b, the radicals
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of lobe are lub, the soft mass of the B single lobed or B
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double lobed, with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe
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globe, the guttural G adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat.
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The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus also
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you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly.
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The very globe continually transcends and translates itself and becomes winged in its orbit.
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Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into
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molds which the fronds of water plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The
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whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose
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pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in
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their axils. When the sun withdraws in the sand ceases to flow, But
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in the morning the streams will start once more, and branch and branch again
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into a myriad of others. You here see, perchance how blood vessels are
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formed. If you look closely, you observe that first there pushes forward from
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the thawing mass, a stream of softened sand with a drop like point,
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like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward,
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until it lasts with more heat and moisture. As the sun gets higher,
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the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the
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most inert also yields, separates from the latter, and forms for itself a
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meandering channel or artery within that in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing
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like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever
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and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly
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the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords
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to form the sharp edges of its channel. Such are the sources of rivers.
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In the silicious manner which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system,
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and in the still finer soil and organic matter, the fleshy fiber or cellular
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tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay. The ball of
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the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to
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their extent from the thawing mass of the Who knows what the human body would
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expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven, is not the hand
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A spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins. The ear may be regarded
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fancifully as a lichen umbilicaria on the side of the head with its lobe or
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drop the lip labium from labor lapse or lapses from the sides of the cavernous
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mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is
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a still larger drop the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a
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slide from the brows into the valleys of the face, opposed and diffused by
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the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is
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a thick and now loitering drop larger or smaller. The lobes are the fingers
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of the leaf, And as many lobes as it has in so many directions,
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it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have
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caused it to flow yet farther. Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated
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the principle of all the operations of nature, the maker of this earth,
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but patented a leaf. What champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us? That
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we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating
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to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat
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excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver
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lights and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward. But
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this suggests at least that nature has some bowels. And there again is mother
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of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground. This is
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spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry.
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I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions, fresh curls
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spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie
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along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that nature is in
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full blast within the Earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum
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upon stratum, like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists
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and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry, like the leaves of a tree,
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which precede flowers and fruit. Not a fossil earth, but a living earth,
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compared with whose great central life, all animal and vegetable life is merely
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parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuvier from their graves. You may melt
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your metals and cast them into the most beautiful molds you can. They will
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ever excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And
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not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the
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hands of the potter ere long. Not only on these banks, but on
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every hill and plain, and in every hollow. The frost comes out of
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the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with
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music or migrates to other climes in clouds, Thaw, with his gentle persuasion,
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is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts the other,
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but breaks in pieces. When the ground was partially bare of snow,
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and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to
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compare the first tender signs of the infant year, just peeping forth with the
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stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter life. Everlasting golden
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rods, pin weeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently
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than in summer, even as if their beauty was not ripe till then even
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cotton grass, cat tails, moulins, John's wart, hard hack meadow sweet,
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and other strong stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds,
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decent weeds at least, which widowed nature wears. I am particularly attracted
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by the arching and sheaf like top of the wool grass. It brings back
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the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art loves
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to copy, and which in the vegetable kingdom have the same relation to types
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already in the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style,
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older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of winter are suggestive
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of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king
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described as a rude and boisterous tyrant, but with the gentleness of a lover,
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he adorns the tresses of summer. At the approach of spring, the
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red squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my
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feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and
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chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard. And when I
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stamped, they only chirruped the louder, as if passed all fear and respect
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in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them, No, you don't
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chickrie, chickree. They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to
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perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible.
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The first sparrow of spring, the year beginning with younger hope than ever,
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the faint, silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the
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blue bird, the song sparrow, and the red wing, as if the
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last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell. What at such a time are
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histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations. The brooks sing carols
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and glees to the spring. The marsh hawk, sailing low over the meadow,
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is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of
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melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the
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ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire, a
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primitus orature herba imbribus primoribus ivocata, as if the earth sent forth an inward
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heat to greet the returning sun. Not yellow, but green is the color
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of its flame, the symbol of perpetual youth. The grass blade, like
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a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed
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by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last
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year's hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill
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oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that for in the
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growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are
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their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green
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stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply so our human
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life, but dies down to its root and still puts forth its green blade
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to eternity. Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide
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along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end.
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A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear
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a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore. Olit olit olit chip
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chip chip chichar che wis whis whiss, He too is helping to crack it.
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How handsome. The great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice,
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answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular. It is unusually
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hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or
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waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface
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in vain till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold
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this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond
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full of glee and youth, as if it spoke, the joy of the
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fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore, a silvery sheen
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as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish.
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Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is
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alive again, But this spring is broke up more steadily. As I have
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said, the change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from
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dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis,
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which all things proclaim it is seemingly instantaneous. At last, suddenly an influx
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of light filled my house. Though the evening was at hand, and the
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clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain.
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I looked out the window and lo where yesterday was cold gray ice,
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there lay the transparent pond, already calm and full of hopes, as in
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a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom. Though nun
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was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote horizon, I
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heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a
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thousand years. Methought the same sweet and powerful song as of yore, Oh
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the evening robin at the end of a New England summer day. If I
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could ever find the twig he sits upon, I mean he, I mean
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the twig. This, at last is not the terdous migratorious. The pitch
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pines and shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly
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resumed their several characters looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive,
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as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew that it would
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not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the
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forest I at your very woodpile, whether its winter is past or not.
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As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low
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over the woods, like weary travelers getting in late from southern lakes and indulging
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at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I
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could hear the rush of their wings. When driving toward my house, they
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suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond.
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So I came in and shut the door, and passed my first spring
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night in the woods. In the morning I watched the geese from the door
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through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off,
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so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement.
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But when I stood on the shore, they at once rose up with
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a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they
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had got into rank, circled about over my head twenty nine of them,
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and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader,
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at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. A plump of
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ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the
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wake of their noisier cousins. For a week I heard the circling, groping
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clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and
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still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain.
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In April, the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks,
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and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it
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had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any
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and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow
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trees. Ere white men came in almost all climes. The tortoise and the
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frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season. And birds fly with
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song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds below to
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correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature, as
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every season seems best to us in its turn. So the coming of spring
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is like the creation of cosmos out of chaos, and the realization of the
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Golden age. Eurus ad Aurorum nabathaeque regnaressist persidak aradis juga subdita matutinis. The
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east wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathean kingdom, and the Persian and the
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ridges placed under the morning rays man was born, Whether the artificer of things,
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the origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed or
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the earth being recent and lately sundered from the high ether, retained some seeds
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of cognate heaven. A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener,
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so our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed
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if we lived in the present always and took advantage of every accident that befell
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us, like the grass, which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that
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falls on it, and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect
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of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter
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while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning, all men's sins
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are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a
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sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own
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recover'd innocence, we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known
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your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and
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merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world. But the sun
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shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you
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meet him at some serene work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched.
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Veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring
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influence with the innocence of infancy, And all his faults are for good.
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There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a
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savor of holiness, groping for expression blindly and ineffectually, perhaps like a new
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born instinct. And for a short hour the south hillside echoes to no vulgar
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jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind
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and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant, even
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he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not
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leave open his prison doors, Why the judge does not dismiss his case.
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Why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation. It is because they do not
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obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely
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offers to all. A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and
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beneficent breath of the mourning causes that in respect to the love of virtue and
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the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man as
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the sprouts of the forest which has been felled in like manner. The evil
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which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which
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began to spring up again, from developing themselves, and destroys them. After
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the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing themselves, then
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the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as
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the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, than the nature
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of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men, seeing
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the nature of this man like that of a brute, think that he has
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never possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments
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of man? The Golden age was first created, which, without any avenger,
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spontaneously without law, cherished fidelity and rectitude. Punishment and fear were not,
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nor were threatening words read on suspended brass. Nor did the suppliant crowd
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fear the words of their judge, but were safe without an avenger. Not
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yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended to the liquid waves, that
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it might see a foreign world, and mortals knew no shores but their own.
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There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm blasts soothed the flowers
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born without seed. On the twenty ninth of April, as I was fishing
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from the bank of the river near the nine acre Corner Bridge, Standing on
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the quaking grass and willow roots where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular
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rattling sound somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers.
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When looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a
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night hawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over
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and over, showing the under side of its wings, which gleamed like a
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satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell.
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This sight reminded me of falconry, and what nobleness and poetry are associated with
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that sport. The merlin. It seemed to me it might be called,
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but I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I
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had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar
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like the larger hawks, But it sported with proud reliance in the fields of
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air, mounting again and again with its strange chuckle. It repeated its free
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and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering
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from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra
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firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe, sporting there alone,
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and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played.
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It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it?
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Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred and its father in the
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heavens the tenant of the air. It seemed related to the earth, but
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by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag, or was
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its native nest made in the angle of a cloud woven of the rainbow's trimmings,
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and the sunset sky and line with some soft midsummer haze caught up from
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Earth its eerye now some cliffy cloud. Beside this, I got a rare
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mess of golden and silver and bright cuprious fishes, which looked like a string
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of jewels. Ah, I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of
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many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root
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to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in
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so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead if they had
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been slumbering in their graves. As some suppose, there needs no stronger proof
49:52
of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O death,
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where was thy sting, O grave? Where was thy victory? Then our
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village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which
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surround it. We need the tonic of wildness to wade sometimes in marshes where
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the bittern and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe,
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to smell the whispering sedge, where only some wilder and more solitary fowl
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builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
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At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things,
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we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea
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be infinitely wild, unsurvey and unfathomed by us. Because unfathomable, we can
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never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible
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vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea coast with its wrecks, the
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wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the
51:29
rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own
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limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are
51:46
cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion, which disgusts and disheartens
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us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a day
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horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes
52:04
to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was
52:07
heavy. But the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health
52:15
of nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that nature is
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so rife with life, that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered
52:30
to prey on one another, that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out
52:38
of existence, like pulp tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads
52:46
run over in the road. And that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood
52:54
with a liability to accident. We must see how little account is to be
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made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal
53:07
innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds Fatal.
53:17
Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will
53:27
not bear to be stereotyped. Early in May, the oaks, hickories,
53:34
maples, and other trees just putting out amidst of the pine woods around the
53:38
pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days,
53:46
as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hill
53:52
sides. Here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw
53:55
a loon in the pond, And during the first week of the month I
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heard the whipper will, the brown thrasher, the vieri, the wood pewee,
54:07
the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush long
54:13
before the phoebe had already come once more, and looked in at my door
54:17
and window to see if my house was cavern like enough for her, sustaining
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herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air
54:29
which she surveyed the premises. The sulfur like pollen of the pitch pine soon
54:35
covered the ground and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that
54:40
you could have collected a barrelful. This is the sulfur showers we bear of.
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Even in Kalidas drama of Sacontala we read of rills dyed yellow with the
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golden dust of the lotus. And so the seasons went rolling on into summer,
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as one rambles into higher and higher grass. Thus was my first year's
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life, and the woods completed, and the second year was similar to it.
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I finally left Walden September sixth, eighteen forty seven. End of Chapter seventeen