_March 27. Saturday._ Magnanimity, though it look expensive for a short

course, is always economy in the long run. Be generous in your poverty,

if you would be rich. To make up a great action there are no subordinate

mean ones. We can never afford to postpone a true life to-day to any

future and anticipated nobleness. We think if by tight economy we

can manage to arrive at independence, then indeed we will begin to be

generous without stay. We sacrifice all nobleness to a little present

meanness. If a man charges you eight hundred pay him eight hundred

and fifty, and it will leave a clean edge to the sum. It will be like

nature, overflowing and rounded like the bank of a river, not close and

precise like a drain or ditch.

* * * * *

It is always a short step to peace—of mind.

* * * * *

Under this line there is or has been life; as, when I see the mole's

raised gallery in the meadow, I know that he has passed underneath.

* * * * *

I must not lose any of my freedom by being a farmer and landholder. Most

who enter on any profession are doomed men. The world might as well sing

a dirge over them forthwith. The farmer's muscles are rigid. He can do

one thing long, not many well. His pace seems determined henceforth;

he never quickens it. A very rigid Nemesis is his fate. When the right

wind blows or a star calls, I can leave this arable and grass ground,

without making a will or settling my estate. I would buy a farm as

freely as a silken streamer. Let me not think my front windows must face

east henceforth because a particular hill slopes that way. My life must

undulate still. I will not feel that my wings are clipped when once I

have settled on ground which the law calls my own, but find new pinions

grown to the old, and talaria to my feet beside.

_March 30. Tuesday._ I find my life growing slovenly when it does not

exercise a constant supervision over itself. Its duds accumulate. Next

to having lived a day well is a clear and calm overlooking of all our

days.

FRIENDSHIP

Now we are partners in such legal trade,

We'll look to the beginnings, not the ends,

Nor to pay-day, knowing true wealth is made

For current stock and not for dividends.

I am amused when I read how Ben Jonson engaged that the ridiculous masks

with which the royal family and nobility were to be entertained should

be "grounded upon antiquity and solid learning."[228]

ON THE SUN COMING OUT IN THE AFTERNOON

_April 1._

Methinks all things have travelled since you shined,

But only Time, and clouds, Time's team, have moved;

Again foul weather shall not change my mind,

But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I loved.

In reading a work on agriculture, I skip the author's moral reflections,

and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at

the profitable level of what he has to say. There is no science in men's

religion; it does not teach me so much as the report of the committee on

swine. My author shows he has dealt in corn and turnips and can worship

God with the hoe and spade, but spare me his morality.[229]

_April 3._ Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.[230]

_April 4. Sunday._ The rattling of the tea-kettle below stairs reminds

me of the cow-bells I used to hear when berrying in the Great Fields

many years ago, sounding distant and deep amid the birches. That cheap

piece of tinkling brass which the farmer hangs about his cow's neck has

been more to me than the tons of metal which are swung in the belfry.

They who prepare my evening meal below

Carelessly hit the kettle as they go,

With tongs or shovel,

And, ringing round and round,

Out of this hovel

It makes an Eastern temple by the sound.

At first I thought a cow-bell, right at hand

'Mid birches, sounded o'er the open land,

Where I plucked flowers

Many years ago,

Speeding midsummer hours

With such secure delight they hardly seemed to flow.

_April 5._ This long series of desultory mornings does not tarnish the

brightness of the prospective days. Surely faith is not dead. Wood,

water, earth, air are essentially what they were; only society has

degenerated. This lament for a golden age is only a lament for golden

men.

* * * * *

I only ask a clean seat. I will build my lodge on the southern slope

of some hill, and take there the life the gods send me. Will it not be

employment enough to accept gratefully all that is yielded me between

sun and sun?[231] Even the fox digs his own burrow. If my jacket and

trousers, my boots and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do.

Won't they, Deacon Spaulding?[232]

_April 7. Wednesday._ My life will wait for nobody, but is being matured

still irresistibly while I go about the streets and chaffer with this

man and that to secure it a living. It will cut its own channel, like

the mountain stream, which by the longest ridges and by level prairies

is not kept from the sea finally. So flows a man's life, and will

reach the sea water, if not by an earthy channel, yet in dew and rain,

overleaping all barriers, with rainbows to announce its victory. It

can wind as cunningly and unerringly as water that seeks its level; and

shall I complain if the gods make it meander? This staying to buy me a

farm is as if the Mississippi should stop to chaffer with a clamshell.

What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow than you see. Where

the off ox treads, there is it not, it is farther off; where the nigh

ox walks, it will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop

fails not. What of drought? What of rain? Is not my sand well clayed,

my peat well sanded? Is it not underdrained and watered?[233]

My ground is high,

But 'tis not dry,

What you call dew

Comes filtering through;

Though in the sky,

It still is nigh;

Its soil is blue

And virgin too.

* * * * *

If from your price ye will not swerve,

Why, then I'll think the gods reserve

A greater bargain there above,

Out of their sup'rabundant love

Have meantime better for me cared,

And so will get my stock prepared,

Plows of new pattern, hoes the same,

Designed a different soil to tame,

And sow my seed broadcast in air,

Certain to reap my harvest there.

_April 8._ Friends are the ancient and honorable of the earth. The

oldest men did not begin friendship. It is older than Hindostan and the

Chinese Empire. How long has it been cultivated, and is still the staple

article! It is a divine league struck forever. Warm, serene days only

bring it out to the surface. There is a friendliness between the sun

and the earth in pleasant weather; the gray content of the land is its

color.

* * * * *

You can tell what another's suspicions are by what you feel forced to

become. You will wear a new character, like a strange habit, in their

presence.

_April 9. Friday._ It would not be hard for some quiet brave man to leap

into the saddle to-day and eclipse Napoleon's career by a grander,—show

men at length the meaning of war. One reproaches himself with

supineness, that he too has sat quiet in his chamber, and not treated

the world to the sound of the trumpet; that the indignation which has

so long rankled in his breast does not take to horse and to the field.

The bravest warrior will have to fight his battles in his dreams, and

no earthly war note can arouse him. There are who would not run with

Leonidas. Only the third-rate Napoleons and Alexanders does history tell

of. The brave man does not mind the call of the trumpet nor hear the

idle clashing of swords without, for the infinite din within. War is but

a training, compared with the active service of his peace. Is he not at

war? Does he not resist the ocean swell within him, and walk as gently

as the summer's sea? Would you have him parade in uniform, and manœuvre

men, whose equanimity is his uniform and who is himself manœuvred?

* * * * *

The times have no heart. The true reform can be undertaken any morning

before unbarring our doors. It calls no convention. I can do two thirds

the reform of the world myself. When two neighbors begin to eat corn

bread, who before ate wheat, then the gods smile from ear to ear, for

it is very pleasant to them. When an individual takes a sincere step,

then all the gods attend, and his single deed is sweet.[234]

* * * * *

_April 10. Saturday._ I don't know but we should make life all too tame

if we had our own way, and should miss these impulses in a happier time.

* * * * *

How much virtue there is in simply seeing! We may almost say that the

hero has striven in vain for his pre-eminency, if the student oversees

him. The woman who sits in the house and _sees_ is a match for a

stirring captain. Those still, piercing eyes, as faithfully exercised

on their talent, will keep her even with Alexander or Shakespeare. They

may go to Asia with parade, or to fairyland, but not beyond her ray.

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only

serve the eyes. The farthest blue streak in the horizon I can see, I

may reach before many sunsets. What I saw alters not; in my night, when

I wander, it is still steadfast as the star which the sailor steers by.

Whoever has had one thought quite lonely, and could contentedly digest

that in solitude, knowing that none could accept it, may rise to the

height of humanity, and overlook all living men as from a pinnacle.

* * * * *

Speech never made man master of men, but the eloquently refraining from

it.

_April 11. Sunday._ A greater baldness my life seeks, as the crest of

some bare hill, which towns and cities do not afford. I want a directer

relation with the sun.

FRIENDSHIP'S STEADFASTNESS

True friendship is so firm a league

That's maintenance falls into the even tenor

Of our lives, and is no tie,

But the continuance of our life's thread.

If I would safely keep this new-got pelf,

I have no care henceforth but watch myself,

For lo! it goes untended from my sight,

Waxes and wanes secure with the safe star of night.

See with what liberal step it makes its way,

As we could well afford to let it stray

Throughout the universe, with the sun and moon,

Which would dissolve allegiance as soon.

Shall I concern myself for fickleness,

And undertake to make my friends more sure,

When the great gods out of sheer kindliness,

Gave me this office for a sinecure?

* * * * *

Death cannot come too soon

Where it can come at all,

But always is too late

Unless the fates it call.

_April 15. Thursday._ The gods are of no sect; they side with no man.

When I imagine that Nature inclined rather to some few earnest and

faithful souls, and specially existed for them, I go to see an obscure

individual who lives under the hill, letting both gods and men alone,

and find that strawberries and tomatoes grow for him too in his garden

there, and the sun lodges kindly under his hillside, and am compelled

to acknowledge the unbribable charity of the gods.

Any simple, unquestioned mode of life is alluring to men. The man who

picks peas steadily for a living is more than respectable. He is to be

envied by his neighbors.

_April 16._ I have been inspecting my neighbors' farms to-day and

chaffering with the landholders, and I must confess I am startled to

find everywhere the old system of things so grim and assured. Wherever I

go the farms are run out, and there they lie, and the youth must buy old

land and bring it to. Everywhere the relentless opponents of reform are

a few old maids and bachelors, who sit round the kitchen fire, listening

to the singing of the tea-kettle and munching cheese-rinds.[235]

_April 18. Sunday._ We need pine for no office for the sake of a certain

culture, for all valuable experience lies in the way of a man's duty.

My necessities of late have compelled me to study Nature as she is

related to the farmer,—as she simply satisfies a want of the body.

Some interests have got a footing on the earth which I have not made

sufficient allowance for. That which built these barns and cleared the

land thus had some valor.[236]

* * * * *

We take little steps, and venture small stakes, as if our actions were

very fatal and irretrievable. There is no swing to our deeds. But our

life is only a retired valley where we rest on our packs awhile. Between

us and our end there is room for any delay. It is not a short and easy

southern way, but we must go over snow-capped mountains to reach the

sun.

_April 20._ You can't beat down your virtue; so much goodness it must

have.

* * * * *

When a room is furnished, comfort is not furnished.

* * * * *

Great thoughts hallow any labor. To-day I earned seventy-five cents

heaving manure out of a pen, and made a good bargain of it. If the

ditcher muses the while how he may live uprightly, the ditching spade

and turf knife may be engraved on the coat-of-arms of his posterity.

* * * * *

There are certain current expressions and blasphemous moods of viewing

things, as when we say "he is doing a good business," more prophane than

cursing and swearing. There is death and sin in such words. Let not the

children hear them.

_April 22. Thursday._ There are two classes of authors: the one write

the history of their times, the other their biography.

_April 23. Friday._ Any greatness is not to be mistaken. Who shall cavil

at it? It stands once for all on a level with the heroes of history. It

is not to be patronized. It goes alone.

* * * * *

When I hear music, I flutter, and am the scene of life, as a fleet of

merchantmen when the wind rises.

_April 24._ Music is the sound of the circulation in nature's veins.

It is the flux which melts nature. Men dance to it, glasses ring and

vibrate, and the fields seem to undulate. The healthy ear always hears

it, nearer or more remote.

* * * * *

It has been a cloudy, drizzling day, with occasional brightenings in

the mist, when the trill of the tree sparrow seemed to be ushering in

sunny hours.[237]

_April 25._ A momentous silence reigns always in the woods, and their

meaning seems just ripening into expression. But alas! they make no

haste. The rush sparrow,[238] Nature's minstrel of serene hours, sings

of an immense leisure and duration.

When I hear a robin sing at sunset, I cannot help contrasting the

equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. We return

from the lyceum and caucus with such stir and excitement, as if a crisis

were at hand; but no natural scene or sound sympathizes with us, for

Nature is always silent and unpretending as at the break of day. She

but rubs her eyelids.

* * * * *

I am struck with the pleasing friendships and unanimities of nature in

the woods, as when the moss on the trees takes the form of their leaves.

* * * * *

There is all of civilized life in the woods. Their wildest scenes have

an air of domesticity and homeliness, and when the flicker's cackle is

heard in the clearings, the musing hunter is reminded that civilization

has imported nothing into them.[239] The ball-room is represented by

the catkins of the alder at this season, which hang gracefully like a

lady's ear-drops.

All the discoveries of science are equally true in their deepest

recesses; nature there, too, obeys the same laws. Fair weather and foul

concern the little red bug upon a pine stump; for him the wind goes

round the right way and the sun breaks through the clouds.[240]

_April 26. Monday._ At R. W. E.'s.

The charm of the Indian to me is that he stands free and unconstrained

in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily

and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His

house is a prison, in which he finds himself oppressed and confined,

not sheltered and protected. He walks as if he sustained the roof; he

carries his arms as if the walls would fall in and crush him, and his

feet remember the cellar beneath. His muscles are never relaxed. It is

rare that he overcomes the house, and learns to sit at home in it, and

roof and floor and walls support themselves, as the sky and trees and

earth.

It is a great art to saunter.

_April 27._ It is only by a sort of voluntary blindness, and omitting

to see, that we know ourselves, as when we see stars with the side of

the eye. The nearest approach to discovering what we are is in dreams.

It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning

round. And foolish are they that look in glasses with that intent.

The porters have a hard time, but not so hard as he that carries his

own shoulders. That beats the Smyrna Turks. Some men's broad shoulders

are load enough. Even a light frame can stand under a great burden,

if it does not have to support itself. Virtue is buoyant and elastic;

it stands without effort and does not feel gravity; but sin plods and

shuffles. Newton needed not to wait for an apple to fall to discover

the attraction of gravitation; it was implied in the fall of man.

_April 28. Wednesday._ We falsely attribute to men a determined

character; putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them,

we presume we know them. Pity the man who has a character to support.

It is worse than a large family. He is silent poor indeed. But in

fact character is never explored, nor does it get developed in time,

but eternity is its development, time its envelope. In view of this

distinction, a sort of divine politeness and heavenly good breeding

suggests itself, to address always the enveloped character of a man. I

approach a great nature with infinite expectation and uncertainty, not

knowing what I may meet. It lies as broad and unexplored before me as

a scraggy hillside or pasture. I may hear a fox bark, or a partridge

drum, or some bird new to these localities may fly up. It lies out there

as old, and yet as new. The aspect of the woods varies every day, what

with their growth and the changes of the seasons and the influence of

the elements, so that the eye of the forester never twice rests upon

the same prospect. Much more does a character show newly and variedly,

if directly seen. It is the highest compliment to suppose that in the

intervals of conversation your companion has expanded and grown. It

may be a deference which he will not understand, but the nature which

underlies him will understand it, and your influence will be shed as

finely on him as the dust in the sun settles on our clothes. By such

politeness we may educate one another to some purpose. So have I felt

myself educated sometimes; I am expanded and enlarged.

_April 29._ Birds and quadrupeds pass freely through nature, without

prop or stilt. But man very naturally carries a stick in his hand,

seeking to ally himself by many points to nature, as a warrior stands by

his horse's side with his hand on his mane. We walk the gracefuler for

a cane, as the juggler uses a leaded pole to balance him when he dances

on a slack wire.

* * * * *

Better a monosyllabic life than a ragged and muttered one; let its

report be short and round like a rifle, so that it may hear its own echo

in the surrounding silence.

_April 30._ Where shall we look for standard English but to the words

of any man who has a depth of feeling in him? Not in any smooth and

leisurely essay. From the gentlemanly windows of the country-seat no

sincere eyes are directed upon nature, but from the peasant's horn

windows a true glance and greeting occasionally. "For summer being

ended, all things," said the Pilgrim, "stood in appearance with a

weather-beaten face, and the whole country full of woods and thickets

represented a wild and savage hue." Compare this with the agricultural

report.

_May 1. Saturday._ Life in gardens and parlors is unpalatable to me. It

wants rudeness and necessity to give it relish. I would at least strike

my spade into the earth with as good will as the woodpecker his bill

into a tree.[241]

WACHUSETT[242]

_May 2._

Especial I remember thee,

Wachusett, who like me

Standest alone without society.

Thy far blue eye,

A remnant of the sky,

Seen through the clearing or the gorge,

Or from the windows of the forge,

Doth leaven all it passes by.

Nothing is true

But stands 'tween me and you,

Thou western pioneer,

Who know'st not shame nor fear,

By venturous spirit driven

Under the eaves of heaven;

And canst expand thee there,

And breathe enough of air?

Upholding heaven, holding down earth,

Thy pastime from thy birth,

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other;

May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

_May 3. Monday._ We are all pilots of the most intricate Bahama

channels. Beauty may be the sky overhead, but Duty is the water

underneath. When I see a man with serene countenance in the sunshine of

summer, drinking in peace in the garden or parlor, it looks like a great

inward leisure that he enjoys; but in reality he sails on no summer's

sea, but this steady sailing comes of a heavy hand on the tiller. We

do not attend to larks and bluebirds so leisurely but that conscience

is as erect as the attitude of the listener. The man of principle gets

never a holiday. Our true character silently underlies all our words and

actions, as the granite underlies the other strata. Its steady pulse

does not cease for any deed of ours, as the sap is still ascending in

the stalk of the fairest flower.

_May 6. Thursday._ The fickle person is he that does not know what is

true or right absolutely,—who has not an ancient wisdom for a lifetime,

but a new prudence for every hour. We must sail by a sort of dead

reckoning on this course of life, not speak any vessel nor spy any

headland, but, in spite of all phenomena, come steadily to port at last.

In general we must have a catholic and universal wisdom, wiser than

any particular, and be prudent enough to defer to it always. We are

literally wiser than we know. Men do not fail for want of knowledge,

but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference.[243] These low

weathercocks on barns and fences show not which way the general and

steady current of the wind sets,—which brings fair weather or foul,—but

the vane on the steeple, high up in another stratum of atmosphere, tells

that. What we need to know in any case is very simple.[244] I shall not

mistake the direction of my life; if I but know the high land and the

main,—on this side the Cordilleras, on that the Pacific,—I shall know

how to run. If a ridge intervene, I have but to seek, or make, a gap to

the sea.

_May 9. Sunday._ The pine stands in the woods like an Indian,—untamed,

with a fantastic wildness about it, even in the clearings. If an Indian

warrior were well painted, with pines in the background, he would seem

to blend with the trees, and make a harmonious expression. The pitch

pines are the ghosts of Philip and Massasoit. The white pine has the

smoother features of the squaw.

* * * * *

The poet speaks only those thoughts that come unbidden, like the wind

that stirs the trees, and men cannot help but listen. He is not listened

to, but heard. The weathercock might as well dally with the wind as a

man pretend to resist eloquence. The breath that inspires the poet has

traversed a whole Campagna, and this new climate here indicates that

other latitudes are chilled or heated.

* * * * *

Speak to men as to gods and you will not be insincere.

WESTWARD, HO!

The needles of the pine

All to the west incline.[245]

THE ECHO OF THE SABBATH BELL HEARD IN THE WOODS[246]

Dong, sounds the brass in the east,

As if for a civic feast,

But I like that sound the best

Out of the fluttering west.

The steeple rings a knell,

But the fairies' silvery bell

Is the voice of that gentle folk,

Or else the horizon that spoke.

Its metal is not of brass,

But air, and water, and glass,

And under a cloud it is swung,

And by the wind is rung,

With a slim silver tongue.

When the steeple tolls the noon,

It soundeth not so soon,

Yet it rings an earlier hour,

And the sun has not reached its tower.

_May 10. Monday._ A good warning to the restless tourists of these days

is contained in the last verses of Claudian's "Old Man of Verona."

"Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.

Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae."[247]

_May 23. Sunday._ Barn.—The distant woods are but the tassels of my eye.

Books are to be attended to as new sounds merely. Most would be put to

a sore trial if the reader should assume the attitude of a listener.

They are but a new note in the forest. To our lonely, sober thought the

earth is a wild unexplored. Wildness as of the jay and muskrat reigns

over the great part of nature. The oven-bird and plover are heard in the

horizon. Here is a new book of heroes, come to me like the note of the

chewink from over the fen, only over a deeper and wider fen. The pines

are unrelenting sifters of thought; nothing petty leaks through them.

Let me put my ear close, and hear the sough of this book, that I may

know if any inspiration yet haunts it. There is always a later edition

of every book than the printer wots of, no matter how recently it was

published. All nature is a new impression every instant.

* * * * *

The aspects of the most simple object are as various as the aspects

of the most compound. Observe the same sheet of water from different

eminences. When I have travelled a few miles I do not recognize the

profile of the hills of my native village.

_May 27. Thursday._ I sit in my boat on Walden, playing the flute this

evening, and see the perch, which I seem to have charmed, hovering

around me, and the moon travelling over the bottom, which is strewn

with the wrecks of the forest, and feel that nothing but the wildest

imagination can conceive of the manner of life we are living. Nature is

a wizard. The Concord nights are stranger than the Arabian nights.

We not only want elbow-room, but eye-room in this gray air which shrouds

all the fields. Sometimes my eyes see over the county road by daylight

to the tops of yonder birches on the hill, as at others by moonlight.

Heaven lies above, because the air is deep.

* * * * *

In all my life hitherto I have left nothing behind.

_May 31. Monday._ That title, "The Laws of Menu[248] with the Gloss of

Culluca," comes to me with such a volume of sound as if it had swept

unobstructed over the plains of Hindostan; and when my eye rests on

yonder birches, or the sun in the water, or the shadows of the trees, it

seems to signify the laws of them all. They are the laws of you and me,

a fragrance wafted down from those old times, and no more to be refuted

than the wind.

When my imagination travels eastward and backward to those remote years

of the gods, I seem to draw near to the habitation of the morning, and

the dawn at length has a place. I remember the book as an hour before

sunrise.

* * * * *

We are height and depth both, a calm sea at the foot of a promontory.

Do we not overlook our own depths?

_June 1._ To have seen a man out of the East or West is sufficient to

establish their reality and locality. I have seen a Mr. Wattles to-day,

from Vermont, and now know where that is and that it is; a reformer,

with two soldier's eyes and shoulders, who began to belabor the world

at ten years, a ragged mountain boy, as fifer of a company, with set

purpose to remould it from those first years.

* * * * *

The great person never wants an opportunity to be great, but makes

occasion for all about him.

_June 2. Wednesday._ I am brought into the near neighborhood and am

become a silent observer of the moon's paces to-night, by means of a

glass, while the frogs are peeping all around me on the earth, and the

sound of the accordion seems to come from some bright saloon yonder. I

am sure the moon floats in a human atmosphere. It is but a distant scene

of the world's drama. It is a wide theatre the gods have given us, and

our actions must befit it. More sea and land, mountain and valley, here

is,—a further West, a freshness and wildness in reserve when all the

land shall be cleared.

I see three little lakes between the hills near its edge, reflecting the

sun's rays. The light glimmers as on the water in a tumbler. So far off

do the laws of reflection hold. I seem to see the ribs of the creature.

This is the aspect of their day, its outside,—their heaven above their

heads, towards which they breathe their prayers. So much is between me

and them. It is noon there, perchance, and ships are at anchor in the

havens or sailing on the seas, and there is a din in the streets, and

in this light or that shade some leisurely soul contemplates.

But now dor-bugs fly over its disk and bring me back to earth and night.

_June 7. Monday._ The inhabitants of those Eastern plains seem to

possess a natural and hereditary right to be conservative and magnify

forms and traditions. "Immemorial custom is transcendent law," says

Menu. That is, it was the custom of gods before men used it. The fault

of our New England custom is that it is memorial. What is morality but

immemorial custom? It is not manner but character, and the conservative

conscience sustains it.[249]

We are accustomed to exaggerate the immobility and stagnation of those

eras, as of the waters which levelled the steppes; but those slow

revolving "years of the gods" were as rapid to all the needs of virtue

as these bustling and hasty seasons. Man stands to revere, he kneels

to pray. Methinks history will have to be tried by new tests to show

what centuries were rapid and what slow. Corn grows in the night.[250]

Will this bustling era detain the future reader longer? Will the earth

seem to have conversed more with the heavens during these times? Who

is writing better Vedas? How science and art spread and flourished,

how trivial conveniences were multiplied, that which is the gossip

of the world is not recorded in them; and if they are left out of our

scripture, too, what will remain?

Since the Battle of Bunker Hill we think the world has _not_ been at a

standstill.

When I remember the treachery of memory and the manifold accidents

to which tradition is liable, how soon the vista of the past closes

behind,—as near as night's crescent to the setting day,—and the dazzling

brightness of noon is reduced to the faint glimmer of the evening star,

I feel as if it were by a rare indulgence of the fates that any traces

of the past are left us,—that my ears which do not hear across the

interval over which a crow caws should chance to hear this far-travelled

sound. With how little coöperation of the societies, after all, is the

past remembered!

* * * * *

I know of no book which comes to us with grander pretensions than

the "Laws of Menu;" and this immense presumption is so impersonal and

sincere that it is never offensive or ridiculous. Observe the modes in

which modern literature is advertised, and then consider this Hindoo

prospectus. Think what a reading public it addresses, what criticism it

expects. What wonder if the times were not ripe for it?[251]

_June 8._ Having but one chair, I am obliged to receive my visitors

standing, and, now I think of it, those old sages and heroes must always

have met erectly.

_July 10 to 12._ This town, too, lies out under the sky, a port of entry

and departure for souls to and from heaven.[252]

A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem

inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be in Uranus, or it may be in

the shutter. It is the original sound of which all literature is but

the echo. It makes all fear superfluous. Bravery comes from further than

the sources of fear.

_Aug. 1. Sunday._ I never met a man who cast a free and healthy glance

over life, but the best live in a sort of Sabbath light, a Jewish

gloom. The best thought is not only without sombreness, but even without

morality. The universe lies outspread in floods of white light to it.

The moral aspect of nature is a jaundice reflected from man. To the

innocent there are no cherubim nor angels. Occasionally we rise above

the necessity of virtue into an unchangeable morning light, in which we

have not to choose in a dilemma between right and wrong, but simply to

live right on and breathe the circumambient air.[253] There is no name

for this life unless it be the very vitality of _vita_. Silent is the

preacher about this, and silent must ever be, for he who knows it will

not preach.

_Aug. 4. Wednesday._ My pen is a lever which, in proportion as the near

end stirs me further within, the further end reaches to a greater depth

in the reader.

* * * * *

Nawshawtuct.—Far in the east I read _Nature's Corn Law Rhymes_. Here,

in sight of Wachusett and these rivers and woods, my mind goes singing

to itself of other themes than taxation. The rush sparrow sings still

unintelligible, as from beyond a depth in me which I have not fathomed,

where my future lies folded up. I hear several faint notes, quite

outside me, which populate the waste.

This is such fresh and flowing weather, as if the waves of the morning

had subsided over the day.

_Aug. 6._ If I am well, then I see well. The bulletins of health are

twirled along my visual rays, like pasteboards on a kite string.

I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being

elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm

as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and seems as

superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour,

unworn by time, with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English

dress as indifferently as the Sanscrit. The great tone of the book is

of such fibre and such severe tension that no time nor accident can

relax it.[254] The great thought is never found in a mean dress, but

is of virtue to ennoble any language. Let it issue from the lips of

the Wolofs, or from the forum of Rome, the nine Muses will seem to

have been purveyors for it. Its education is always liberal; it has

all the graces of oratory and of poetry. The lofty tone which is its

indispensable breath is grace to the eye and music to the ear. It can

endow a college.[255]

* * * * *

So supremely religious a book imposes with authority on the latest

age. The very simplicity of style of the ancient lawgiver, implying

all in the omission of all, proves an habitual elevation of thought,

which the multiplied glosses of later days strive in vain to slope up

to. The whole book by noble gestures and inclinations seems to render

words unnecessary. The abbreviated sentence points to the thing for

explanation. As the sublimest thought is most faithfully printed in the

face, and needs the fewest interpreting words. The page nods toward the

fact and is silent.

As I walk across the yard from the barn to the house through the fog,

with a lamp in my hand, I am reminded of the Merrimack nights, and seem

to see the sod between tent-ropes. The trees, seen dimly through the

mist, suggest things which do not at all belong to the past, but are

peculiar to my fresh New England life. It is as novel as green peas.

The dew hangs everywhere upon the grass, and I breathe the rich, damp

air in slices.

_Aug. 7. Saturday._ The impression which those sublime sentences made on

me last night has awakened me before any cockcrowing. Their influence

lingers around me like a fragrance, or as the fog hangs over the earth

late into the day.

The very locusts and crickets of a summer day are but later or older

glosses on the Dherma Sástra of the Hindoos, a continuation of the

sacred code.[256]

_Aug. 9._ It is vain to try to write unless you feel strong in the

knees.

Any book of great authority and genius seems to our imagination to

permeate and pervade all space. Its spirit, like a more subtle ether,

sweeps along with the prevailing winds of the country. Its influence

conveys a new gloss to the meadows and the depths of the wood, and

bathes the huckleberries on the hills, as sometimes a new influence

in the sky washes in waves over the fields and seems to break on

some invisible beach in the air. All things confirm it. It spends the

mornings and the evenings.[257]

* * * * *

Everywhere the speech of Menu demands the widest apprehension and

proceeds from the loftiest plateau of the soul. It is spoken unbendingly

to its own level, and does not imply any contemporaneous speaker.

* * * * *

I read history as little critically as I consider the landscape, and

am more interested in the atmospheric tints and various lights and

shades which the intervening spaces create than in its groundwork

and composition. It is the morning now turned evening and seen in the

west,—the same sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty is like

the sunset; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat and bounded, but

atmospheric and roving, or free. But, in reality, history fluctuates as

the face of the landscape from morning to evening. What is of moment

in it is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures; we want not its

_then_, but its _now_. We do not complain that the mountains in the

horizon are blue and indistinct; they are the more like the heavens.

Of what moment are facts that can be lost,—which need to be

commemorated? The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead.

The Pyramids do not tell the tale confided to them. The living fact

commemorates itself. Why look in the dark for light? Look in the light

rather. Strictly speaking, the Societies have not recovered one fact

from oblivion, but they themselves are instead of the fact that is lost.

The researcher is more memorable than the researched. The crowd stood

admiring the mist and the dim outline of the trees seen through it, and

when one of their number advanced to explore the phenomenon, with fresh

admiration all eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. Critical

acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the _past_ cannot be

_presented_; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over

past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to

find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought,

you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle

is being fought, there are hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and

muse, and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs again.

Does Nature remember, think you, that they _were_ men, or not rather

that they _are_ bones?

Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It

is written as if the spectator should be thinking of the back side of

the picture on the wall, as if the author expected the dead would be

his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience. Men

seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries,

earnestly rebuilding the works behind, as they are battered down by the

incroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both

fall a prey to the enemy.

Biography is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography.

Let us not leave ourselves empty that, so vexing our bowels, we may go

abroad and be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?

As if it were to dispense justice to all. But the time has not come for

that.[258]

_Aug. 12._ We take pleasure in beholding the form of a mountain in the

horizon, as if by retiring to this distance we had then first conquered

it by our vision, and were made privy to the design of the architect;

so when we behold the shadow of our earth on the moon's disk. When

we climb a mountain and observe the lesser irregularities, we do not

give credit to the comprehensive and general intelligence which shaped

them; but when we see the outline in the horizon, we confess that the

hand which moulded those opposite slopes, making one balance the other,

worked round a deep centre, and was privy to the plan of the universe.

The smallest of nature's works fits the farthest and widest view, as if

it had been referred in its bearings to every point in space.[259] It

harmonizes with the horizon line and the orbits of the planets.

_Aug. 13. Friday._ I have been in the swamp by Charles Miles's this

afternoon, and found it so bosky and sylvan that Art would never have

freedom or courage to imitate it. It can never match the luxury and

superfluity of Nature. In Art all is seen; she cannot afford concealed

wealth, and in consequence is niggardly; but Nature, even when she

is scant and thin outwardly, contents us still by the assurance of a

certain generosity at the roots. Surely no stinted hand has been at work

here for these centuries to produce these particular tints this summer.

The double spruce attracts me here, which I had hardly noticed in the

gardens, and now I understand why men try to make them grow about their

houses.[260]

Nature has her luxurious and florid style as well as Art. Having a

pilgrim's cup to make, she gives to the whole—stem, bowl, handle, and

nose—some fantastic shape, as if it were to be the car of a fabulous

marine deity,—a Nereus or Triton. She is mythical and mystical always,

and spends her whole genius upon the least work.[261]

_Aug. 16._ There is a double virtue in the sound that can wake an echo,

as in the lowing of the cows this morning. Far out in the horizon that

sound travels quite round the town, and invades each recess of the wood,

advancing at a grand pace and with a sounding Eastern pomp.

_Aug. 18._ I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and

my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and

fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear

the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were

breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much

as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks

and trees and beasts.[262] Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which

measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life's

stream.

* * * * *

Of all the duties of life it is hardest to be in earnest; it implies a

good deal both before and behind. I sit here in the barn this flowing

afternoon weather, while the school bell is ringing in the village, and

find that all the things immediate to be done are very trivial. I could

postpone them to hear this locust sing. The cockerels crow and the hens

cluck in the yard as if time were dog-cheap. It seems something worth

detaining time,—the laying of an egg. Cannot man do something to comfort

the gods, and not let the world prove such a piddling concern? No doubt

they would be glad to sell their shares at a large discount by this

time. Eastern Railroad stock promises a better dividend.

The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature.

They have not seen the west side of any mountain.

Day and night, mountain and wood, are visible from the wilderness as

well as the village. They have their primeval aspects, sterner, savager

than any poet has sung. It is only the white man's poetry. We want the

Indian's report. Wordsworth is too tame for the Chippeway.[263]

* * * * *

The landscape contains a thousand dials which indicate the natural

divisions of time; the shadows of a thousand styles point to the hour.

The afternoon is now far advanced, and a fresh and leisurely wind is

blowing on the river, causing long reaches of serene ripples. It has

done its stent, and seems not to flow but lie at its length reflecting

the light. The haze over the woods seems like the breath of all nature,

rising from a myriad pores into the attenuated atmosphere.[264] It is

sun smoke, the woof he has woven, his day's toil displayed.[265]

If I were awaked from a deep sleep, I should know which side the

meridian the sun might be by the chirping of the crickets. Night has

already insidiously set her foot in the valley in many places, where the

shadows of the shrubs and fences begin to darken the landscape. There

is a deeper shading in the colors of the afternoon landscape. Perhaps

the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon, not only because of the

greater transparency of the atmosphere then, but because we naturally

look most into the west,—as we look forward into the day,—and so in the

forenoon see the sunny side of things, but in the afternoon the shadow

of every tree.

What a drama of light and shadow from morning to night! Soon as the sun

is over the meridian, in deep ravines under the east side of the cliffs

night forwardly plants her foot, and, as day retreats, steps into his

trenches, till at length she sits in his citadel. For long time she

skulks behind the needles of the pine, before she dares draw out her

forces into the plain. Sun, moon, wind, and stars are the allies of one

side or the other.[266]

* * * * *

How much will some officious men give to preserve an old book, of which

perchance only a single [copy] exists, while a wise God is already

giving, and will still give, infinitely more to get it destroyed!

_Aug. 20. Friday._ It seems as if no cock lived so far in the horizon

but a faint vibration reached me here, spread the wider over earth as

the more distant.

In the morning the crickets snore, in the afternoon they chirp, at

midnight they dream.

_Aug. 24._ Let us wander where we will, the universe is built round

about us, and we are central still. By reason of this, if we look into

the heavens, they are concave, and if we were to look into a gulf as

bottomless, it would be concave also. The sky is curved downward to

the earth in the horizon, because I stand in the plain. I draw down its

skirts. The stars so low there seem loth to go away from me, but by a

circuitous path to be remembering and returning to me.[267]

_Aug. 28. Saturday._ A great poet will write for his peers alone, and

indite no line to an inferior. He will remember only that he saw truth

and beauty from his position, and calmly expect the time when a vision

as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.[268]

Johnson can no more criticise Milton than the naked eye can criticise

Herschel's map of the sun.

* * * * *

The art which only gilds the surface and demands merely a superficial

polish, without reaching to the core, is but varnish and filigree. But

the work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates

the lapse of time and has an ingrained polish, which still appears when

fragments are broken off, an essential quality of its substance. Its

beauty is its strength. It breaks with a lustre, and splits in cubes

and diamonds. Like the diamond, it has only to be cut to be polished,

and its surface is a window to its interior splendors.

* * * * *

True verses are not counted on the poet's fingers, but on his

heart-strings.

My life hath been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and live to utter it.[269]

In the Hindoo scripture the idea of man is quite illimitable and

sublime. There is nowhere a loftier conception of his destiny. He

is at length lost in Brahma himself, "the divine male." Indeed, the

distinction of races in this life is only the commencement of a series

of degrees which ends in Brahma.

The veneration in which the Vedas are held is itself a remarkable fact.

Their code embraced the whole moral life of the Hindoo, and in such a

case there is no other truth than sincerity. Truth is such by reference

to the heart of man within, not to any standard without. There is no

creed so false but faith can make it true.

In inquiring into the origin and genuineness of this scripture it is

impossible to tell when the divine agency in its composition ceased, and

the human began. "From fire, from air, and from the sun" was it "milked

out."

* * * * *

There is no grander conception of creation anywhere. It is peaceful

as a dream,[270] and so is the annihilation of the world. It is such a

beginning and ending as the morning and evening, for they had learned

that God's methods are not violent. It was such an awakening as might

have been heralded by the faint dreaming chirp of the crickets before

the dawn.

The very indistinctness of its theogony implies a sublime truth. It does

not allow the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, but directly

hints of a supremer still which created the last. The creator is still

behind, increate.[271] The divinity is so fleeting that its attributes

are never expressed.

_Aug. 30._ What is a day, if the day's work be not done? What are the

divisions of time to them who have nothing to do? What is the present

or the future to him who has no occasion for them, who does not create

them by his industry?

* * * * *

It is now easy to apply to this ancient scripture such a catholic

criticism as it will become the part of some future age to apply to the

Christian,—wherein the design and idea which underlies it is considered,

and not the narrow and partial fulfillment.

These verses are so eminently textual, that it seems as if those old

sages had concentrated all their wisdom in little fascicles, of which

future times were to be the commentary; as the light of this lower world

is only the dissipated rays of the sun and stars.[272] They seem to have

been uttered with a sober morning prescience, in the dawn of time.[273]

There is a sort of holding back, or withdrawal of the full meaning,

that the ages may follow after and explore the whole. The sentence opens

unexpensively and almost unmeaningly, as the petals of a flower.[274]

* * * * *

To our nearsightedness this mere outward life seems a constituent part

of us, and we do not realize that as our soul expands it will cast off

the shell of routine and convention, which afterward will only be an

object for the cabinets of the curious. But of this people the temples

are now crumbled away, and we are introduced to the very hearth of

Hindoo life and to the primeval conventicle where how to eat and to

drink and to sleep were the questions to be decided.[275]

* * * * *

The simple life herein described confers on us a degree of freedom even

in the perusal. We throw down our packs and go on our way unencumbered.

Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied that they seem like a more

refined pleasure and repleteness.[276]

_Sept. 1. Wednesday._ When I observe the effeminate taste of some of

my contemporaries in this matter of poetry, and how hardly they bear

with certain incongruities, I think if this age were consulted it would

not choose granite to be the backbone of the world, but Bristol spar or

Brazilian diamonds. But the verses which have consulted the refinements

even of a golden age will be found weak and nerveless for an iron one.

The poet is always such a Cincinnatus in literature as with republican

simplicity to raise all to the chiefest honors of the state.

Each generation thinks to inhabit only a west end of the world, and

have intercourse with a refined and civilized Nature, not conceiving

of her broad equality and republicanism. They think her aristocratic

and exclusive because their own estates are narrow. But the sun

indifferently selects his rhymes, and with a liberal taste weaves into

his verse the planet and the stubble.[277]

Let us know and conform only to the fashions of eternity.

* * * * *

The very austerity of these Hindoos is tempting to the devotional

as a more refined and nobler luxury.[278] They seem to have indulged

themselves with a certain moderation and temperance in the severities

which their code requires, as divine exercises not to be excessively

used as yet. One may discover the root of a Hindoo religion in his own

private history, when, in the silent intervals of the day or the night,

he does sometimes inflict on himself like austerities with a stern

satisfaction.

The "Laws of Menu" are a manual of private devotion, so private and

domestic and yet so public and universal a word as is not spoken in

the parlor or pulpit in these days.[279] It is so impersonal that it

exercises our sincerity more than any other. It goes with us into the

yard and into the chamber, and is yet later spoken than the advice of

our mother and sisters.[280]

_Sept. 2. Thursday._ There is but one obligation, and that is the

obligation to obey the highest dictate. None can lay me under another

which will supersede this. The gods have given me these years without

any incumbrance; society has no mortgage on them. If any man assist

me in the way of the world, let him derive satisfaction from the deed

itself, for I think I never shall have dissolved my prior obligations

to God. Kindness repaid is thereby annulled. I would let his deed lie

as fair and generous as it was intended. The truly beneficent never

relapses into a creditor; his great kindness is still extended to

me and is never done. Of those noble deeds which have me for their

object I am only the most fortunate spectator, and would rather be the

abettor of their nobleness than stay their tide with the obstructions

of impatient gratitude. As true as action and reaction are equal, that

nobleness which was as wide as the universe will rebound not on him the

individual, but on the world. If any have been kind to me, what more do

they want? I cannot make them richer than they are. If they have not

been kind, they cannot take from me the privilege which they have not

improved. My obligations will be my lightest load, for that gratitude

which is of kindred stuff in me, expanding every pore, will easily

sustain the pressure. We walk the freest through the air we breathe.

* * * * *

The sublime sentences of Menu carry us back to a time when purification

and sacrifice and self-devotion had a place in the faith of men, and

were not as now a superstition. They contain a subtle and refined

philosophy also, such as in these times is not accompanied with so lofty

and pure a devotion.

* * * * *

I saw a green meadow in the midst of the woods to-day which looked as if

Dame Nature had set her foot there, and it had bloomed in consequence.

It was the print of her moccasin.

* * * * *

Sometimes my thought rustles in midsummer as if ripe for the fall.[281]

I anticipate the russet hues and the dry scent of autumn, as the

feverish man dreams of balm and sage.

* * * * *

I was informed to-day that no Hindoo tyranny presided at the framing

of the world,—that I am a freeman of the universe, and not sentenced to

any caste.[282]

* * * * *

When I write verses I serve my thoughts as I do tumblers; I rap them to

see if they will ring.

_Sept. 3. Friday._ Next to Nature, it seems as if man's actions were the

most natural, they so gently accord with her. The small seines of flax

or hemp stretched across the shallow and transparent parts of the river

are no more intrusion than the cobweb in the sun. It is very slight and

refined outrage at most. I stay my boat in mid-current and look down in

the running water to see the civil meshes of his nets, and wonder how

the blustering people of the town could have done this elvish work. The

twine looks like a new river-weed and is to the river like a beautiful

memento of man, man's presence in nature discovered as silently and

delicately as Robinson discovered that there [were] savages on his

island by a footprint in the sand.[283]

* * * * *

Moonlight is the best restorer of antiquity. The houses in the village

have a classical elegance as of the best days of Greece, and this

half-finished church reminds me of the Parthenon, or whatever is most

famous and excellent in art.[284] So serene it stands, reflecting

the moon, and intercepting the stars with its rafters, as if it were

refreshed by the dews of the night equally with me. By day Mr. Hosmer,

but by night Vitruvius rather. If it were always to stand in this mild

and sombre light it would be finished already. It is in progress by day

but completed by night, and already its designer is an old master. The

projecting rafter so carelessly left on the tower, holding its single

way through the sky, is quite architectural, and in the unnecessary

length of the joists and flooring of the staging around the walls there

is an artistic superfluity and grace. In these fantastic lines described

upon the sky there is no trifling or conceit. Indeed, the staging for

the most part is the only genuine native architecture and deserves to

stand longer than the building it surrounds. In this obscurity there are

no fresh colors to offend, and the light and shade of evening adorn the

new equally with the old.

_Sept. 4. Saturday._ I think I could write a poem to be called

"Concord." For argument I should have the River, the Woods, the

Ponds, the Hills, the Fields, the Swamps and Meadows, the Streets and

Buildings, and the Villagers. Then Morning, Noon, and Evening, Spring,

Summer, Autumn, and Winter, Night, Indian Summer, and the Mountains in

the Horizon.

* * * * *

A book should be so true as to be intimate and familiar to all men,

as the sun to their faces,—such a word as is occasionally uttered to a

companion in the woods in summer, and both are silent.

* * * * *

As I pass along the streets of the village on the day of our annual

fair, when the leaves strew the ground, I see how the trees keep just

such a holiday all the year. The lively spirits of their sap mount

higher than any plowboy's let loose that day. A walk in the autumn

woods, when, with serene courage, they are preparing for their winter

campaign, if you have an ear for the rustling of their camp or an eye

for the glancing of their armor, is more inspiring than the Greek or

Peninsular war.[285] Any grandeur may find society as great as itself

in the forest.

* * * * *

Pond Hill.—I see yonder some men in a boat, which floats buoyantly amid

the reflections of the trees, like a feather poised in mid-air, or a

leaf wafted gently from its twig to the water without turning over. They

seem very delicately to have availed themselves of the natural laws, and

their floating there looks like a beautiful and successful experiment

in philosophy. It reminds me how much more refined and noble the life

of man might be made, how its whole economy might be as beautiful as a

Tuscan villa,[286]—a new and more catholic art, the art of life, which

should have its impassioned devotees and make the schools of Greece and

Rome to be deserted.

_Sept. 5. Saturday._ Barn.

Greater is the depth of sadness

Than is any height of gladness.

I cannot read much of the best poetry in prose or verse without feeling

that it is a partial and exaggerated plaint, rarely a carol as free

as Nature's. That content which the sun shines for between morning and

evening is unsung. The Muse solaces herself; she is not delighted but

consoled.[287] But there are times when we feel a vigor in our limbs,

and our thoughts are like a flowing morning light, and the stream

of our life without reflection shows long reaches of serene ripples.

And if we were to sing at such an hour, there would be no catastrophe

contemplated in our verse, no tragic element in it,[288] nor yet a

comic. For the life of the gods is not in any sense dramatic, nor can

be the subject of the drama; it is epic without beginning or end, an

eternal interlude without plot,—not subordinate one part to another,

but supreme as a whole, at once leaf and flower and fruit. At present

the highest strain is Hebraic. The church bell is the tone of all

religious thought, the most musical that men consent to sing. In the

youth of poetry, men love to praise the lark and the morning, but they

soon forsake the dews and skies for the nightingale and evening shades.

Without instituting a wider comparison I might say that in Homer there

is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern

and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men

cling to this old song, because they have still moments of unbaptized

and uncommitted life which give them an appetite for more. There is no

cant in him, as there is no religion. We read him with a rare sense of

freedom and irresponsibleness, as though we trod on native ground, and

were autochthones of the soil.[289]

* * * * *

Through the fogs of this distant vale we look back and upward to the

source of song, whose crystal stream still ripples and gleams in the

clear atmosphere of the mountain's side.

* * * * *

Some hours seem not to be occasion for anything, unless for great

resolves to draw breath and repose in, so religiously do we postpone

all action therein. We do not straight go about to execute our thrilling

purpose, but shut our doors behind us, and saunter with prepared mind,

as if the half were already done.[290]

Sometimes a day serves only to hold time together.[291]

_Sept. 12. Sunday._

Where I have been

There was none seen.

_Sept. 14._ No bravery is to be named with that which can face its own

deeds.

* * * * *

In religion there is no society.

* * * * *

Do not dissect a man till he is dead.

* * * * *

Love does not analyze its object.

* * * * *

We do not know the number of muscles in a caterpillar dead; much less

the faculties of a man living.

* * * * *

You must believe that I know before you can tell me.

* * * * *

To the highest communication I can make no reply; I lend only a silent

ear.

_Sept. 18. Saturday._ Barn.—It is a great event, the hearing of a bell

ring in one of the neighboring towns, particularly in the night. It

excites in me an unusual hilarity, and I feel that I am in season wholly

and enjoy a prime and leisure hour.

_Sept. 20. Monday._ Visited Sampson Wilder of Boston. His method of

setting out peach trees is as follows:—

Dig a hole six feet square and two deep, and remove the earth; cover

the bottom to the depth of six inches with lime and ashes in equal

proportions, and upon this spread another layer of equal thickness, of

horn parings, tips of horns, bones, and the like, then fill up with a

compost of sod and strong animal manure, say four bushels of hog manure

to a cartload of sod. Cover the tree—which should be budded at two years

old—but slightly, and at the end of two years dig a trench round it

three feet from the tree and six inches deep, and fill it with lime and

ashes.

For grapes:—

Let your trench be twelve feet wide and four deep, cover the bottom

with paving-stones six inches, then old bricks with mortar attached or

loose six inches more, then beef-bones, horns, etc., six more (Captain

Bobadil), then a compost similar to the preceding. Set your roots one

foot from the north side, the trench running east and west, and bury

eight feet of the vine crosswise the trench, not more than eight inches

below the surface. Cut it down for three or four years, that root may

accumulate, and then train it from the sun up an inclined plane.

_Sept. 28. Tuesday._ I anticipate the coming in of spring as a child

does the approach of some pomp through a gate of the city.

_Sept. 30._

Better wait

Than be too late.[292]

_Nov. 29. Cambridge._—One must fight his way, after a fashion, even in

the most civil and polite society. The most truly kind and gracious have

to be won by a sort of valor, for the seeds of suspicion seem to lurk in

every spadeful of earth, as well as those of confidence. The president

and librarian turn the cold shoulder to your application, though they

are known for benevolent persons. They wonder if you can be anything but

a thief, contemplating frauds on the library. It is the instinctive and

salutary principle of self-defense; that which makes the cat show her

talons when you take her by the paw.[293]

Certainly that valor which can open the hearts of men is superior to

that which can only open the gates of cities.[294]

You must always let people see that they serve themselves more than

you,—not by your ingratitude, but by sympathy and congratulation.

* * * * *

The twenty-first volume of Chalmers's English Poets contains Hoole's

and Mickle's Translations. In the shape of a note to the Seventh Book

of the Lusiad, Mickle has written a long "Inquiry into the Religious

Tenets and Philosophy of the Bramins."

_Nov. 30. Tuesday._ Cambridge.—When looking over the dry and dusty

volumes of the English poets, I cannot believe that those fresh and

fair creations I had imagined are contained in them. English poetry

from Gower down, collected into one alcove, and so from the library

window compared with the commonest nature, seems very mean. Poetry

cannot breathe in the scholar's atmosphere. The Aubreys and Hickeses,

with all their learning, prophane it yet indirectly by their zeal. You

need not envy his feelings who for the first time has cornered up poetry

in an alcove. I can hardly be serious with myself when I remember that

I have come to Cambridge after poetry; and while I am running over

the catalogue and collating and selecting, I think if it would not be

a shorter way to a complete volume to step at once into the field or

wood, with a very low reverence to students and librarians. Milton did

not foresee what company he was to fall into.[295] On running over the

titles of these books, looking from time to time at their first pages

or farther, I am oppressed by an inevitable sadness. One must have come

into a library by an oriel window, as softly and undisturbed as the

light which falls on the books through a stained window, and not by the

librarian's door, else all his dreams will vanish. Can the Valhalla be

warmed by steam and go by clock and bell?

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we

wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy

speech. Though the speech of the poet goes to the heart of things,

yet he is that one especially who speaks civilly to Nature as a second

person and in some sense is the patron of the world. Though more than

any he stands in the midst of Nature, yet more than any he can stand

aloof from her. The best lines, perhaps, only suggest to me that that

man simply saw or heard or felt what seems the commonest fact in my

experience.

One will know how to appreciate Chaucer best who has come down to

him the natural way through the very meagre pastures of Saxon and

ante-Chaucerian poetry. So human and wise he seems after such diet that

we are as liable to misjudge him so as usually.[296]

* * * * *

The Saxon poetry extant seems of a more serious and philosophical cast

than the very earliest that can be called English. It has more thought,

but less music. It translates Boëthius, it paraphrases the Hebrew Bible,

it solemnly sings of war, of life and death, and chronicles events.

The earliest English poetry is tinctured with romance through the

influence of the Normans, as the Saxon was not. The ballad and metrical

romance belong to this period. Those old singers were for the most part

imitators or translators.[297] Or will it not appear, when viewed at

a sufficient distance, that our brave new poets are also secondary as

they, and refer the eye that reads them and their poetry, too, back and

backward without end?

* * * * *

Nothing is so attractive and unceasingly curious as character. There

is no plant that needs such tender treatment, there is none that will

endure so rough. It is the violet and the oak. It is the thing we mean,

let us say what we will. We mean our own character, or we mean yours.

It is divine and related to the heavens, as the earth is by the flashes

of the Aurora. It has no acquaintance nor companion. It goes silent

and unobserved longer than any planet in space, but when at length it

does show itself, it seems like the flowering of all the world, and

its before unseen orbit is lit up like the trail of a meteor. I hear

no good news ever but some trait of a noble character. It reproaches me

plaintively. I am mean in contrast, but again am thrilled and elevated

that I can see my own meanness, and again still, that my own aspiration

is realized in that other. You reach me, my friend, not by your kind or

wise words to me here or there; but as you retreat, perhaps after years

of vain familiarity, some gesture or unconscious action in the distance

speaks to me with more emphasis than all those years. I am not concerned

to know what eighth planet is wandering in space up there, or when Venus

or Orion rises, but if, in any cot to east or west and set behind the

woods, there is any planetary character illuminating the earth.

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes

Which outward nature wears,

For, as its hourly fashions change,

It all things else repairs.

My eyes look inward, not without,

And I but hear myself,

And this new wealth which I have got

Is part of my own pelf.

For while I look for change abroad,

I can no difference find,

Till some new ray of peace uncalled

Lumines my inmost mind,

As, when the sun streams through the wood,

Upon a winter's morn,

Where'er his silent beams may stray

The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known

The morning breeze would come,

Or simple flowers anticipate

The insect's noonday hum,

Till that new light with morning cheer

From far streamed through the aisles,

And nimbly told the forest trees

For many stretching miles?[298]

_[Dec.] 12. Sunday._ All music is only a sweet striving to express

character. Now that lately I have heard of some traits in the character

of a fair and earnest maiden whom I had only known superficially, but

who has gone hence to make herself more known by distance, they sound

like strains of a wild harp music. They make all persons and places

who had thus forgotten her to seem late and behindhand. Every maiden

conceals a fairer flower and more luscious fruit than any calyx in the

field, and if she go with averted face, confiding in her own purity and

high resolves, she will make the heavens retrospective, and all nature

will humbly confess its queen.[299]

There is apology enough for all the deficiency and shortcoming in the

world in the patient waiting of any bud of character to unfold itself.

Only character can command our reverent love. It is all mysteries in

itself.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds

And paints the heavens so gay,

But yonder fast-abiding light

With its unchanging ray?

I've felt within my inmost soul

Such cheerful morning news,

In the horizon of my mind

I've seen such morning hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,

When the first birds awake,

Is heard within some silent wood

Where they the small twigs break;

Or in the eastern skies is seen

Before the sun appears,

Foretelling of the summer heats

Which far away he bears.

P. M. Walden.—I seem to discern the very form of the wind when, blowing

over the hills, it falls in broad flakes upon the surface of the pond,

this subtle element obeying the same law with the least subtle. As it

falls it spreads itself like a mass of lead dropped upon an anvil. I

cannot help being encouraged by this blithe activity in the elements in

these degenerate days of men. Who hears the rippling of the rivers will

not utterly despair of anything. The wind in the wood yonder sounds like

an incessant waterfall, the water dashing and roaring among rocks.

_[Dec.] 13. Monday._ We constantly anticipate repose. Yet it surely

can only be the repose that is in entire and healthy activity. It must

be a repose without rust. What is leisure but opportunity for more

complete and entire action? Our energies pine for exercise. That time

we spend in our duties is so much leisure, so that there is no man but

has sufficient of it.

I make my own time, I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature

can ever get the start of me.

* * * * *

This ancient Scotch poetry, at which its contemporaries so marvelled,

sounds like the uncertain lisping of a child. When man's speech

flows freest it but stutters and stammers. There is never a free and

clear deliverance; but, read now when the illusion of smooth verse

is destroyed by the antique spelling, the sense is seen to stammer

and stumble all the plainer. To how few thoughts do all these sincere

efforts give utterance! An hour's conversation with these men would have

done more. I am astonished to find how meagre that diet is which has fed

so many men. The music of sound, which is all-sufficient at first, is

speedily lost, and then the fame of the poet must rest on the music of

the sense. A great philosophical and moral poet would give permanence

to the language by making the best sound convey the best sense.

_[Dec.] 14. Tuesday._ To hear the sunset described by the old Scotch

poet Douglas, as I have seen it, repays me for many weary pages of

antiquated Scotch. Nothing so restores and humanizes antiquity and makes

it blithe as the discovery of some natural sympathy between it and the

present. Why is it that there is something melancholy in antiquity? We

forget that it had any other future than our present. As if it were not

as near to _the_ future as ourselves! No, thank heavens, these ranks of

men to right and left, posterity and ancestry, are not to be thridded by

any earnest mortal. The heavens stood over the heads of our ancestors as

near as to us. Any living word in their books abolishes the difference

of time. It need only be considered from the present standpoint.

_[Dec.] 15. Wednesday._ A mild summer sun shines over forest and lake.

The earth looks as fair this morning as the Valhalla of the gods.

Indeed our spirits never go beyond nature. In the woods there is an

inexpressible happiness. Their mirth is but just repressed. In winter,

when there is but one green leaf for many rods, what warm content is in

them! They are not rude, but tender, even in the severest cold. Their

nakedness is their defense. All their sounds and sights are elixir to my

spirit. They possess a divine health. God is not more well. Every sound

is inspiriting and fraught with the same mysterious assurance, from the

creaking of the boughs in January to the soft sough of the wind in July.

How much of my well-being, think you, depends on the condition of my

lungs and stomach,—such cheap pieces of Nature as they, which, indeed,

she is every day reproducing with prodigality. Is the arrow indeed fatal

which rankles in the breast of the bird on the bough, in whose eye all

this fair landscape is reflected, and whose voice still echoes through

the wood?

The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by. This

old, familiar river is renewed each instant; only the channel is the

same.[300] The water which so calmly reflects the fleeting clouds and

the primeval trees I have never seen before. It may have washed some

distant shore, or framed a glacier or iceberg at the north, when I last

stood here. Seen through a mild atmosphere, the works of the husbandman,

his plowing and reaping, have a beauty to the beholder which the laborer

never sees.[301]

I seem to see somewhat more of my own kith and kin in the lichens on

the rocks than in any books. It does seem as if mine were a peculiarly

wild nature, which so yearns toward all wildness. I know of no redeeming

qualities in me but a sincere love for some things, and when I am

reproved I have to fall back on to this ground.[302] This is my argument

in reserve for all cases. My love is invulnerable. Meet me on that

ground, and you will find me strong. When I am condemned, and condemn

myself utterly, I think straightway, "But I rely on my love for some

things." Therein I am whole and entire. Therein I am God-propped.

When I see the smoke curling up through the woods from some farmhouse

invisible, it is more suggestive of the poetry of rural and domestic

life than a nearer inspection can be. Up goes the smoke as quietly as

the dew exhales in vapor from these pine leaves and oaks; as busy,

disposing itself in circles and in wreaths, as the housewife on the

hearth below. It is cotemporary with a piece of human biography, and

waves as a feather in some _man's_ cap. Under that rod of sky there is

some plot a-brewing, some ingenuity has planted itself, and we shall see

what it will do. It tattles of more things than the boiling of the pot.

It is but one of man's breaths. All that is interesting in history or

fiction is transpiring beneath that cloud. The subject of all life and

death, of happiness and grief, goes thereunder.

[Illustration: _Winter Landscape from Fair Haven Hill_]

When the traveller in the forest, attaining to some eminence, descries a

column of smoke in the distance, it is a very gentle hint to him of the

presence of man. It seems as if it would establish friendly relations

between them without more ado.[303]

_[Dec.] 18. Saturday._ Some men make their due impression upon their

generation, because a petty occasion is enough to call forth all their

energies; but are there not others who would rise to much higher levels,

whom the world has never provoked to make the effort? I believe there

are men now living who have never opened their mouths in a public

assembly, in whom nevertheless there is such a well of eloquence that

the appetite of any age could never exhaust it; who pine for an occasion

worthy of them, and will pine till they are dead; who can admire, as

well as the rest, at the flowing speech of the orator, but do yet miss

the thunder and lightning and visible sympathy of the elements which

would garnish their own utterance.

If in any strait I see a man fluttered and his ballast gone, then I

lose all hope of him, he is undone; but if he reposes still, though he

do nothing else worthy of him, if he is still a man in reserve, then is

there everything to hope of him. The age may well go pine itself that it

cannot put to use this gift of the gods. He lives on, still unconcerned,

not needing to be used. The greatest occasion will be the slowest to

come.

* * * * *

Sometimes a particular body of men do unconsciously assert that their

will is fate, that the right is decided by their fiat without appeal,

and when this is the case they can never be mistaken; as when one man is

quite silenced by the thrilling eloquence of another, and submits to be

neglected as to his fate, because such is not the willful vote of the

assembly, but their instinctive decision.

_Dec. 23. Thursday._ Concord.—The best man's spirit makes a fearful

sprite to haunt his tomb. The ghost of a priest is no better than that

of a highwayman. It is pleasant to hear of one who has blest whole

regions after his death by having frequented them while alive, who has

prophaned or tabooed no place by being buried in it.[304] It adds not

a little to the fame of Little John that his grave was long "celebrous

for the yielding of excellent whetstones."[305]

A forest is in all mythologies a sacred place, as the oaks among the

Druids and the grove of Egeria; and even in more familiar and common

life a celebrated wood is spoken of with respect, as "Barnsdale Wood"

and "Sherwood." Had Robin Hood no Sherwood to resort [to], it would

be difficult to invest his story with the charms it has got. It is

always the tale that is untold, the deeds done and the life lived in

the unexplored secrecy of the wood, that charm us and make us children

again,—to read his ballads, and hear of the greenwood tree.

_Dec. 24. Friday._ I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I

shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will be success

if I shall have left myself behind. But my friends ask what I will do

when I get there. Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress

of the seasons?[306]

_Dec. 25. Saturday._ It does seem as if Nature did for a long time

gently overlook the prophanity of man. The wood still kindly echoes

the strokes of the axe, and when the strokes are few and seldom, they

add a new charm to a walk. All the elements strive to _naturalize_ the

sound.[307]

Such is our sympathy with the seasons that we experience the same degree

of heat in the winter as in the summer.

It is not a true apology for any coarseness to say that it is natural.

The grim woods can afford to be very delicate and perfect in the

details.

I don't want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That

philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I

begin to live.

_Dec. 26. Sunday._ He is the rich man and enjoys the fruits of riches,

who, summer and winter forever, can find delight in the contemplation

of his soul. I could look as unweariedly up to that cope as into the

heavens of a summer day or a winter night. When I hear this bell ring,

I am carried back to years and Sabbaths when I was newer and more

innocent, I fear, than now, and it seems to me as if there were a world

within a world. Sin, I am sure, is not in overt acts or, indeed, in acts

of any kind, but is in proportion to the time which has come behind us

and displaced eternity,—that degree to which our elements are mixed with

the elements of the world. The whole duty of life is contained in the

question how to respire and aspire both at once.

_Dec. 29. Wednesday._ One does not soon learn the trade of life. That

one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than

any other work. There is need of the nice fingers of the girl as well

as the tough hand of the farmer. The daily work is too often toughening

the pericarp of the heart as well as the hand. Great familiarity with

the world must be nicely managed, lest it win away and bereave us of

some susceptibility. Experience bereaves us of our innocence; wisdom

bereaves us of our ignorance. Let us walk in the world without learning

its ways. Whole weeks or months of my summer life slide away in thin

volumes like mist or smoke, till at length some warm morning, perchance,

I see a sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, its shadow

flitting across the fields, which have caught a new significance from

that accident; and as that vapor is raised above the earth, so shall

the next weeks be elevated above the plane of the actual;[308] or when

the setting sun slants across the pastures, and the cows low to my

inward ear and only enhance the stillness, and the eve is as the dawn,

a beginning hour and not a final one, as if it would never have done,

with its clear western amber inciting men to lives of as limpid purity.

Then do other parts of my day's work shine than I had thought at noon,

for I discover the real purport of my toil, as, when the husbandman has

reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can best tell where

the pressed earth shines most.[309]

* * * * *

All true greatness runs as level a course, and is as unaspiring, as

the plow in the furrow. It wears the homeliest dress and speaks the

homeliest language. Its theme is gossamer and dew lines, johnswort

and loosestrife, for it has never stirred from its repose and is most

ignorant of foreign parts. Heaven is the inmost place. The good have

not to travel far. What cheer may we not derive from the thought that

our courses do not diverge, and we wend not asunder, but as the web of

destiny is woven it [is] fulled, and we are cast more and more into the

centre! And our fates even are social.[310] There is no wisdom which can

take [the] place of humanity, and I find that in old Chaucer that love

rings longest which rhymes best with some saw of Milton's or Edmunds's.

I wish I could be as still as God is. I can recall to my mind the

stillest summer hour, in which the grasshopper sings over the mulleins,

and there is a valor in that time the memory of which is armor that can

laugh at any blow of fortune. A man should go out [of] nature with the

chirp of the cricket or the trill of the veery ringing in his ear. These

earthly sounds should only die away for a season, as the strains of the

harp rise and swell. Death is that expressive pause in the music of the

blast.[311] I would be as clean as ye, O woods. I shall not rest till

I be as innocent as you. I know that I shall sooner or later attain to

an unspotted innocence, for when I consider that state even now I am

thrilled.

If we were wise enough, we should see to what virtue we were indebted

for any happier moment we might have, nor doubt we had earned this at

some time.

These motions everywhere in nature must surely [be] the circulations of

God. The flowing sail, the running stream, the waving tree, the roving

wind,—whence else their infinite health and freedom?[312] I can see

nothing so proper and holy as unrelaxed play and frolic in this bower

God has built for us. The suspicion of sin never comes to this thought.

Oh, if men felt this they would never build temples even of marble

or diamond, but it would be sacrilege and prophane, but disport them

forever in this paradise.

In the coldest day it melts somewhere.

It seems as if only one trait, one little incident in human biography,

need to be said or written in some era, that all readers may go mad

after it, and the man who did the miracle is made a demigod henceforth.

What we all do, not one can tell; and when some lucky speaker utters a

truth of our experience and not of our speculation, we think he must

have had the nine Muses and the three Graces to help him. I can at

length stretch me when I come to Chaucer's breadth; and I think, "Well,

I could be _that_ man's acquaintance,"[313] for he walked in that low

and retired way that I do, and was not too good to live. I am grieved

when they hint of any unmanly submissions he may have made, for that

subtracts from his breadth and humanity.

_Dec. 30. Thursday._ I admire Chaucer for a sturdy English wit. The easy

height he speaks from in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is as good

as anything in it,—as if he were indeed better than any of the company

there assembled.[314]

The poet does not have to go out of himself and cease to tattle of his

domestic affairs, to win our confidence, but is so broad that we see no

limits to his sympathy.

Great delicacy and gentleness of character is constantly displayed in

Chaucer's verse. The simplest and humblest words come readily to his

lips. The natural innocence of the man appears in the simple and pure

spirit in which "The Prioresses Tale" is conceived, in which the child

sings _O alma redemptoris mater_, and in the account of the departure of

Custance with her child upon the sea, in "The Man of Lawes Tale."[315]

The whole story of Chanticleer and Dame Partlet in "The Nonnes Preestes

Tale" is genuine humanity. I know nothing better in its kind. The poets

seem to be only more frank and plain-spoken than other men. Their verse

is but confessions. They always confide in the reader, and speak privily

with him, keeping nothing back.[316]

I know of no safe rule by which to judge of the purity of a former age

but that I see that the impure of the present age are not apt to rise

to noble sentiments when they speak or write, and suspect, therefore,

that there may be more truth than is allowed in the apology that such

was the manner of the age.[317]

Within the circuit of this plodding life,

There are moments of an azure hue

And as unspotted fair as is the violet

Or anemone, when the spring strews them

By some south woodside; which make untrue

The best philosophy which has so poor an aim

But to console man for his grievance here.

I have remembered when the winter came,

High in my chamber in the frosty nights,

How in the summer past some

Unrecorded beam slanted across

Some upland pasture where the Johnswort grew,

Or heard, amidst the verdure of my mind, the bee's

long-smothered hum,

So by the cheap economy of God made rich to go upon

my wintry work again.

In the still, cheerful cold of winter nights,

When, in the cold light of the moon,

On every twig and rail and jutting spout

The icy spears are doubling their length

Against the glancing arrows of the sun,

And the shrunk wheels creak along the way,

Some summer accident long past

Of lakelet gleaming in the July beams,

Or hum of bee under the blue flag,

Loitering in the meads, or busy rill

which now stands dumb and still,

its own memorial, purling at its play along the slopes,

and through the meadows next, till that its sound was

quenched in the staid current of its parent stream.

In memory is the more reality. I have seen how the furrows shone but

late upturned, and where the fieldfare followed in the rear, when all

the fields stood bound and hoar beneath a thick integument of snow.[318]

* * * * *

When the snow is falling thick and fast, the flakes nearest you seem

to be driving straight to the ground, while the more distant seem to

float in the air in a quivering bank, like feathers, or like birds at

play, and not as if sent on any errand. So, at a little distance, all

the works of Nature proceed with sport and frolic. They are more in the

eye and less in the deed.

_Dec. 31. Friday._ Books of natural history make the most cheerful

winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when

the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys,

and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree,

and the migrations of the rice-bird; or of the breaking up of winter

in Labrador. I seem to hear the melting of the snow on the forks of

the Missouri as I read. I imbibe some portion of health from these

reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

There is a singular health for me in those words Labrador and East

Main which no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than federal

are these States! If there were no other vicissitudes but the seasons,

with their attendant and consequent changes, our interest would never

flag. Much more is a-doing than Congress wots of in the winter season.

What journal do the persimmon and buckeye keep, or the sharp-shinned

hawk? What is transpiring from summer to winter in the Carolinas,

and the Great Pine Forest, and the Valley of the Mohawk? The merely

political aspect of the land is never very cheering. Men are degraded

when considered as the members of a political organization. As a nation

the people never utter one great and healthy word. From this side all

nations present only the symptoms of disease. I see but Bunker's Hill

and Sing Sing, the District of Columbia and Sullivan's Island, with a

few avenues connecting them. But paltry are all these beside one blast

of the east or south wind which blows over them all.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. You must converse

much with the field and woods, if you would imbibe such health into your

mind and spirit as you covet for your body. Society is always diseased,

and the best is the sickest. There is no scent in it so wholesome as

that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as

that of everlasting in high pastures. Without that our feet at least

stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid.

I should like to keep some book of natural history always by me as

a sort of elixir, the reading of which would restore the tone of my

system and secure me true and cheerful views of life. For to the sick,

nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health. To the soul that

contemplates some trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment

can come. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political servitude,

no priestcraft nor tyranny, was ever [_sic_] taught by such as drank in

the harmony of nature.[319]

VI

1842

(ÆT. 24-25)

_Jan. 1._ Virtue is the deed of the bravest. It is that art which

demands the greatest confidence and fearlessness. Only some hardy

soul ventures upon it. Virtue is a bravery so hardy that it deals in

what it has no experience in. The virtuous soul possesses a fortitude

and hardihood which not the grenadier nor pioneer can match. It never

shrunk. It goes singing to its work. Effort is its relaxation. The rude

pioneer work of this world has been done by the most devoted worshippers

of beauty.[320] Their resolution has possessed a keener edge than the

soldier's. In winter is their campaign; they never go into quarters.

They are elastic under the heaviest burden, under the extremest physical

suffering.

Methinks good courage will not flag here on the Atlantic border as long

as we are outflanked by the _Fur Countries_. There is enough in that

sound to cheer one under any circumstances. The spruce, the hemlock,

and the pine will not countenance despair. Methinks some creeds in

vestries and churches do forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the

Great Slave Lake, or how the Esquimaux sledges are drawn by dogs, and

in the twilight of the northern night the hunter does not give over

to follow the seal and walrus over the ice. These men are sick and

of diseased imaginations who would toll the world's knell so soon.

Cannot these sedentary sects do better than prepare the shrouds and

write the epitaphs of those other busy living men? The practical faith

of men belies the preacher's consolation. This is the creed of the

hypochondriac.[321]

There is no infidelity so great as that which prays, and keeps the

Sabbath, and founds churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches

a truer doctrine. The church is the hospital for men's souls, but the

reflection that he may one day occupy a ward in it should not discourage

the cheerful labors of the able-bodied man. Let him remember the sick

in their extremities, but not look thither as to his goal.[322]

_Jan. 2. Sunday._ The ringing of the church bell is a much more

melodious sound than any that is heard within the church. All great

values are thus public, and undulate like sound through the atmosphere.

Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches

are only the means of sociality. I will depend on the extravagance

of my neighbors for my luxuries, for they will take care to pamper

me if I will be overfed. The poor man who sacrificed nothing for the

gratification seems to derive a safer and more natural enjoyment from

his neighbor's extravagance than he does himself. It is a new natural

product, from the contemplation of which he derives new vigor and solace

as from a natural phenomenon.

In moments of quiet and leisure my thoughts are more apt to revert to

some natural than any human relation.

Chaucer's sincere sorrow in his latter days for the grossness of

his earlier works, and that he "cannot recall and annul" what he had

"written of the base and filthy love of men towards women; but alas they

are now continued from man to man," says he, "and I cannot do what I

desire," is all very creditable to his character.

Chaucer is the make-weight of his century,—a worthy representative

of England while Petrarch and Boccaccio lived in Italy, and Tell and

Tamerlane in Switzerland and Asia, and Bruce and Rienzi in Europe, and

Wickliffe and Gower in his own land. Edward III and John of Gaunt and

the Black Prince complete the company. The fame of Roger Bacon came

down from the preceding century, and Dante, though just departed, still

exerted the influence of a living presence.[323]

With all his grossness he is not undistinguished for the tenderness

and delicacy of his muse. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness is

peculiar to him which not even Wordsworth can match.[324] And then his

best passages of length are marked by a happy and healthy wit which is

rather rare in the poetry of any nation. On the whole, he impresses

me as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and

Shakespeare, for he would have held up his head in their company. Among

the earliest English poets he is their landlord and host, and has the

authority of such. We read him with affection and without criticism,

for he pleads no cause, but speaks for us, his readers, always. He has

that greatness of trust and reliance which compels popularity. He is

for a whole country and country [_sic_] to know and to be proud of.

The affectionate mention which succeeding early poets make of him,

coupling him with Homer and Virgil, is also to be taken into the account

in estimating his character. King James and Dunbar of Scotland speak

with more love and reverence of him than any cotemporary poet of his

predecessors of the last century. That childlike relation, indeed, does

not seem to exist now which was then.[325]

_Jan. 3. Monday._ It is pleasant when one can relieve the grossness of

the kitchen and the table by the simple beauty of his repast, so that

there may be anything in it to attract the eye of the artist even. I

have been popping corn to-night, which is only a more rapid blossoming

of the seed under a greater than July heat. The popped corn is a perfect

winter flower, hinting of anemones and houstonias. For this little grace

man has, mixed in with the vulgarness of his repast, he may well thank

his stars. The law by which flowers unfold their petals seems only to

have operated more suddenly under the intense heat. It looks like a

sympathy in this seed of the corn with its sisters of the vegetable

kingdom, as if by preference it assumed the flower form rather than the

crystalline. Here has bloomed for my repast such a delicate blossom as

will soon spring by the wall-sides. And this is as it should be. Why

should not Nature revel sometimes, and genially relax and make herself

familiar at my board? I would have my house a bower fit to entertain

her. It is a feast of such innocence as might have snowed down. By my

warm hearth sprang these cerealious blossoms; here was the bank where

they grew.

Methinks some such visible token of approval would always accompany the

simple and healthy repast. There would be such a smiling and blessing

upon it. Our appetite should always be so related to our taste, and the

board we spread for its gratification be an epitome of the universal

table which Nature sets by hill and wood and stream for her dumb

pensioners.[326]

_Jan. 5. Wednesday._ I find that whatever hindrances may occur I write

just about the same amount of truth in my Journal; for the record

is more concentrated, and usually it is some very real and earnest

life, after all, that interrupts. All flourishes are omitted. If I saw

wood from morning to night, though I grieve that I could not observe

the train of my thoughts during that time, yet, in the evening, the

few scrannel lines which describe my day's occupations will make the

creaking of the saw more musical than my freest fancies could have been.

I find incessant labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention

also, the best method to remove palaver out of one's style. One will

not dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before the night

falls in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded,

and ring soberly through the wood; and so will his lines ring and tell

on the ear, when at evening he settles the accounts of the day. I have

often been astonished at the force and precision of style to which

busy laboring men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when they

are required to make the effort. It seems as if their sincerity and

plainness were the main thing to be taught in schools,—and yet not in

the schools, but in the fields, in actual service, I should say. The

scholar not unfrequently envies the propriety and emphasis with which

the farmer calls to his team, and confesses that if that lingo were

written it would surpass his labored sentences.

Who is not tired of the weak and flowing periods of the politician

and scholar, and resorts not even to the Farmer's Almanac, to read the

simple account of the month's labor, to restore his tone again? I want

to see a sentence run clear through to the end, as deep and fertile

as a well-drawn furrow which shows that the plow was pressed down to

the beam. If our scholars would lead more earnest lives, we should not

witness those lame conclusions to their ill-sown discourses, but their

sentences would pass over the ground like loaded rollers, and not mere

hollow and wooden ones, to press in the seed and make it germinate.

A well-built sentence, in the rapidity and force with which it works,

may be compared to a modern corn-planter, which furrows out, drops the

seed, and covers it up at one movement.[327]

The scholar requires hard labor as an impetus to his pen. He will learn

to grasp it as firmly and wield it as gracefully and effectually as an

axe or a sword. When I consider the labored periods of some gentleman

scholar, who perchance in feet and inches comes up to the standard of

his race, and is nowise deficient in girth, I am amazed at the immense

sacrifice of thews and sinews. What! these proportions and these bones,

and this their work! How these hands hewed this fragile matter, mere

filagree or embroidery fit for ladies' fingers! Can this be a stalwart

man's work, who has marrow in his backbone and a tendon Achilles in his

heel? They who set up Stonehenge did somewhat,—much in comparison,—if

it were only their strength was once fairly laid out, and they stretched

themselves.[328]

I discover in Raleigh's verses the vices of the courtier. They are

not equally sustained, as if his noble genius were warped by the

frivolous society of the court. He was capable of rising to a remarkable

elevation. His poetry has for the most part a heroic tone and vigor

as of a knight errant. But again there seems to have been somewhat

unkindly in his education, and as if he had by no means grown up to be

the man he promised. He was apparently too genial and loyal a soul, or

rather he was incapable of resisting temptations from that quarter. If

to his genius and culture he could have added the temperament of Fox or

Cromwell, the world would have had cause longer to remember him. He was

the pattern of nobility. One would have said it was by some lucky fate

that he and Shakespeare flourished at the same time in England, and yet

what do we know of their acquaintanceship?

_Jan. 7. Friday._ I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear tell

of service-berries, pokeweed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these

cheap summer glories?[329]

The great God is very calm withal. How superfluous is any excitement

in his creatures! He listens equally to the prayers of the believer

and the unbeliever. The moods of man should unfold and alternate as

gradually and placidly as those of nature. The sun shines for aye! The

sudden revolutions of these times and this generation have acquired a

very exaggerated importance. They do not interest me much, for they are

not in harmony with the longer periods of nature. The present, in any

aspect in which it can be presented to the smallest audience, is always

mean. God does not sympathize with the popular movements.

_Jan. 8. Saturday._ When, as now, in January a south wind melts

the snow, and the bare ground appears, covered with sere grass and

occasionally wilted green leaves which seem in doubt whether to let go

their greenness quite or absorb new juices against the coming year,—in

such a season a perfume seems to exhale from the earth itself and the

south wind melts my integuments also. Then is she my mother earth. I

derive a real vigor from the scent of the gale wafted over the naked

ground, as from strong meats, and realize again how man is the pensioner

of Nature. We are always conciliated and cheered when we are fed by

[such] an influence, and our needs are felt to be part of the domestic

economy of Nature.

* * * * *

What offends me most in my compositions is the moral element in them.

The repentant say never a brave word. Their resolves should be mumbled

in silence. Strictly speaking, morality is not healthy. Those undeserved

joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they

that sing.

* * * * *

One music seems to differ from another chiefly in its more perfect time,

to use this word in a true sense. In the steadiness and equanimity of

music lies its divinity. It is the only assured tone.[330] When men

attain to speak with as settled a faith and as firm assurance, their

voices will sing and their feet march as do the feet of the soldier.

The very dogs howl if time is disregarded. Because of the perfect

time of this music-box—its harmony with itself—is its greater dignity

and stateliness. This music is more nobly related for its more exact

measure. So simple a difference as this more even pace raises it to the

higher dignity.

Man's progress through nature should have an accompaniment of music. It

relieves the scenery, which is seen through it as a subtler element,

like a very clear morning air in autumn. Music wafts me through the

clear, sultry valleys, with only a slight gray vapor against the hills.

Of what manner of stuff is the web of time wove, when these consecutive

sounds called a strain of music can be wafted down through the centuries

from Homer to me, and Homer have been conversant with that same

unfathomable mystery and charm which so newly tingles my ears?[331]

These single strains, these melodious cadences which plainly proceed

out of a very deep meaning and a sustained soul, are the interjections

of God. They are perhaps the expression of the perfect knowledge which

the righteous at length attain to. Am I so like thee, my brother, that

the cadence of two notes affects us alike? Shall I not some time have

an opportunity to thank him who made music? I feel a sad cheer when I

hear these lofty strains,[332] because there must be something in me as

lofty that hears. But ah, I hear them but rarely! Does it not rather

hear me? If my blood were clogged in my veins, I am sure it would run

more freely. God must be very rich, who, for the turning of a pivot,

can pour out such melody on me. It is a little prophet; it tells me

the secrets of futurity. Where are its secrets wound up but in this

box?[333] So much hope had slumbered. There are in music such strains

as far surpass any faith in the loftiness of man's destiny.[334] He must

be very sad before he can comprehend them. The clear, liquid notes from

the morning fields beyond seem to come through a vale of sadness to man,

which gives all music a plaintive air. It hath caught a higher pace than

any virtue I know. It is the arch-reformer. It hastens the sun to his

setting. It invites him to his rising. It is the sweetest reproach, a

measured satire. I know there is a people somewhere [where] this heroism

has place. Or else things are to be learned which it will be sweet

to learn.[335] This cannot be all rumor. When I hear this, I think of

that everlasting and stable something which is not sound, but to be a

thrilling reality, and can consent to go about the meanest work for as

many years of time as it pleases even the Hindoo penance, for a year

of the gods were as nothing to that which shall come after. What, then,

can I do to hasten that other time, or that space where there shall be

no time, and these things be a more living part of my life,—where there

will be no discords in my life?

_Jan. 9. Sunday._ One cannot too soon forget his errors and

misdemeanors; for [to] dwell long upon them is to add to the offense,

and repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by somewhat better,

and which is as free and original as if they had not been. Not to

grieve long for any action, but to go immediately and do freshly and

otherwise, subtracts so much from the wrong. Else we may make the delay

of repentance the punishment of the sin. But a great nature will not

consider its sins as its own, but be more absorbed in the prospect of

that valor and virtue for the future which is more properly it, than in

those improper actions which, by being sins, discover themselves to be

not it.

* * * * *

Sir W. Raleigh's faults are those of a courtier and a soldier. In his

counsels and aphorisms we see not unfrequently the haste and rashness

of a boy. His philosophy was not wide nor deep, but continually giving

way to the generosity of his nature. What he touches he adorns by his

greater humanity and native nobleness, but he touches not the true nor

original. He thus embellishes the old, but does not unfold the new. He

seems to have been fitted by his genius for short flights of impulsive

poetry, but not for the sustained loftiness of Shakespeare or Milton.

He was not wise nor a seer in any sense, but rather one of nature's

nobility; the most generous nature which can be spared to linger in the

purlieus of the court.

His was a singularly perverted genius, with such an inclination to

originality and freedom, and yet who never steered his own course. Of

so fair and susceptible a nature, rather than broad or deep, that he

delayed to slake his thirst at the nearest and even more turbid wells

of truth and beauty. Whose homage to the least fair or noble left no

space for homage to the all fair. The misfortune of his circumstances,

or rather of the man, appears in the fact that he was the author of

"Maxims of State" and "The Cabinet Council" and "The Soul's Errand."

_Feb. 19. Saturday._ I never yet saw two men sufficiently great to meet

as two. In proportion as they are great the differences are fatal,

because they are felt not to be partial but total. Frankness to him

who is unlike me will lead to the utter denial of him. I begin to see

how that the preparation for all issues is to do virtuously. When two

approach to meet, they incur no petty dangers, but they run terrible

risks. Between the sincere there will be no civilities. No greatness

seems prepared for the little decorum, even savage unmannerliness, it

meets from equal greatness.

_Feb. 20. Sunday._ "Examine animal forms geometrically, from man, who

represents the perpendicular, to the reptile which forms the horizontal

line, and then applying to those forms the rules of the exact sciences,

which God himself cannot change, we shall see that visible nature

contains them all; that the combinations of the seven primitive forms

are entirely exhausted, and that, therefore, they can represent all

possible varieties of morality."—From "The True Messiah; or the Old and

New Testaments, examined according to the Principles of the Language of

Nature. By G. Segger," translated from French by Grater.

* * * * *

I am amused to see from my window here how busily man has divided and

staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither

and thither everywhere over the land.

* * * * *

My path hitherto has been like a road through a diversified country,

now climbing high mountains, then descending into the lowest vales.

From the summits I saw the heavens; from the vales I looked up to the

heights again. In prosperity I remember God, or memory is one with

consciousness; in adversity I remember my own elevations, and only hope

to see God again.

It is vain to talk. What do you want? To bandy words, or deliver some

grains of truth which stir within you? Will you make a pleasant rumbling

sound after feasting, for digestion's sake, or such music as the birds

in springtime?

* * * * *

The death of friends should inspire us as much as their lives. If they

are great and rich enough, they will leave consolation to the mourners

before the expenses of their funerals.[336] It will not be hard to part

with any worth, because it is worthy. How can any good depart? It does

not go and come, but we. Shall we wait for it? Is it slower than we?

_Feb. 21._ I must confess there is nothing so strange to me as my own

body. I love any other piece of nature, almost, better.

I was always conscious of sounds in nature which my ears could never

hear,—that I caught but the prelude to a strain. She always retreats as

I advance. Away behind and behind is she and her meaning. Will not this

faith and expectation make to itself ears at length? I never saw to the

end, nor heard to the end; but the best part was unseen and unheard.

I am like a feather floating in the atmosphere; on every side is depth

unfathomable.

I feel as if years had been crowded into the last month,[337] and yet

the regularity of what we call time has been so far preserved as that

I[338] ... will be welcome in the present. I have lived ill for the

most part because too near myself. I have tripped myself up, so that

there was no progress for my own narrowness. I cannot walk conveniently

and pleasantly but when I hold myself far off in the horizon. And the

soul dilutes the body and makes it passable. My soul and body have

tottered along together of late, tripping and hindering one another like

unpracticed Siamese twins. They two should walk as one, that no obstacle

may be nearer than the firmament.

* * * * *

There must be some narrowness in the soul that compels one to have

secrets.

_Feb. 23. Wednesday._ Every poet's muse is circumscribed in her

wanderings, and may be well said to haunt some favorite spring or

mountain. Chaucer seems to have been the poet of gardens. He has hardly

left a poem in which some retired and luxurious retreat of the kind is

not described, to which he gains access by some secret port, and there,

by some fount or grove, is found his hero and the scene of his tale. It

seems as if, by letting his imagination riot in the matchless beauty

of an ideal garden, he thus fed [_sic_] his fancy on to the invention

of a tale which would fit the scene. The muse of the most universal

poet retires into some familiar nook, whence it spies out the land as

the eagle from his eyrie, for he who sees so far over plain and forest

is perched in a narrow cleft of the crag. Such pure childlike love of

Nature is nowhere to be matched.[339] And it is not strange that the

poetry of so rude an age should contain such polished praise of Nature;

for the charms of Nature are not enhanced by civilization, as society

is, but she possesses a permanent refinement, which at last subdues and

educates men.

The reader has great confidence in Chaucer. He tells no lies. You read

his story with a smile, as if it were the circumlocution of a child,

and yet you find that he has spoke with more directness and economy of

words than a sage. He is never heartless. So new was all his theme in

those days, that [he] had not to invent, but only to tell.[340]

The language of poetry is _infantile_. It cannot talk.

* * * * *

It is the charm and greatness of all society, from friendship to the

drawing-room, that it takes place on a level slightly higher than the

actual characters of the parties would warrant;[341] it is an expression

of faith. True politeness is only hope and trust in men. It never

addresses a fallen or falling man, but salutes a rising generation. It

does not flatter, but only congratulates. The rays of light come to us

in such a curve that every fellow in the street appears higher than he

really is. It is the innate civility of nature.[342]

* * * * *

I am glad that it was so because it could be.

_March 1._ Whatever I learn from any circumstances, that especially I

needed to know. Events come out of God, and our characters determine

them and constrain fate, as much as they determine the words and tone

of a friend to us. Hence are they always acceptable as experience, and

we do not see how we could have done without them.

_March 2._ The greatest impression of character is made by that

person who consents to have no character. He who sympathizes with and

runs through the whole circle of attributes cannot afford to be an

individual. Most men stand pledged to themselves, so that their narrow

and confined virtue has no suppleness. They are like children who cannot

walk in bad company and learn the lesson which even it teaches, without

their guardians, for fear of contamination. He is a fortunate man who

gets through the world without being burthened by a name and reputation,

for they are at any rate but his past history and no prophecy, and as

such concern him no more than another. Character is Genius settled. It

can maintain itself against the world, and if it relapses it repents.

It is as a dog set to watch the property of Genius. Genius, strictly

speaking, is not responsible, for it is not moral.

_March 8._ I live in the perpetual verdure of the globe. I die in the

annual decay of nature.

We can understand the phenomenon of death in the animal better if we

first consider it in the order next below us, the vegetable.

The death of the flea and the elephant are but phenomena of the life of

nature.

* * * * *

Most lecturers preface their discourses on music with a history of

music, but as well introduce an essay on virtue with a history of

virtue.[343] As if the possible combinations of sound, the last wind

that sighed, or melody that waked the wood, had any history other than

a perceptive ear might hear in the least and latest sound of nature!

A history of music would be like the history of the future; for so

little past is it, and capable of record, that it is but the hint of a

prophecy. It is the history of gravitation. It has no history more than

God. It circulates and resounds forever, and only flows like the sea

or air. There might be a history of men or of hearing, but not of the

unheard. Why, if I should sit down to write its story, the west wind

would rise to refute me. Properly speaking, there can be no history but

natural history, for there is no past in the soul but in nature. So that

the history of anything is only the true account of it, which will be

always the same. I might as well write the history of my aspirations.

Does not the last and highest contain them all? Do the lives of the

great composers contain the facts which interested them? What is this

music? Why, thinner and more evanescent than ether; subtler than sound,

for it is only a disposition of sound. It is to sound what color is to

matter. It is the color of a flame, or of the rainbow, or of water. Only

one sense has known it. The least profitable, the least tangible fact,

which cannot be bought or cultivated but by virtuous methods, and yet

our ears ring with it like shells left on the shore.

_March 11. Friday._ Chaucer's familiar, but innocent, way of speaking of

God is of a piece with his character. He comes readily to his thoughts

without any false reverence. If Nature is our mother, is not God much

more? God should come into our thoughts with no more parade than the

zephyr into our ears. Only strangers approach him with ceremony. How

rarely in our English tongue do we find expressed any affection for

God! No sentiment is so rare as love of God,—universal love. Herbert

is almost the only exception. "Ah, my dear God," etc. Chaucer's was a

remarkably affectionate genius. There is less love and simple trust in

Shakespeare. When he sees a beautiful person or object, he almost takes

a pride in the "maistry" of his God.[344] The Protestant Church seems to

have nothing to supply the place of the Saints of the Catholic calendar,

who were at least channels for the affections. Its God has perhaps too

many of the attributes of a Scandinavian deity.

* * * * *

We can only live healthily the life the gods assign us. I must receive

my life as passively as the willow leaf that flutters over the brook. I

must not be for myself, but God's work, and that is always good. I will

wait the breezes patiently, and grow as Nature shall determine. My fate

cannot but be grand so. We may live the life of a plant or an animal,

without living an animal life. This constant and universal content of

the animal comes of resting quietly in God's palm. I feel as if [I]

could at any time resign my life and the responsibility of living into

God's hands, and become as innocent, free from care, as a plant or

stone.

My life, my life! why will you linger? Are the years short and the

months of no account? How often has long delay quenched my aspirations!

Can God afford that I should forget him? Is he so indifferent to my

career? Can heaven be postponed with no more ado? Why were my ears given

to hear those everlasting strains which haunt my life, and yet to be

prophaned much more by these perpetual dull sounds?

* * * * *

Our doubts are so musical that they persuade themselves.

Why, God, did you include me in your great scheme? Will you not make me

a partner at last? Did it need there should be a conscious material?

* * * * *

My friend, my friend, I'd speak so frank to thee that thou wouldst pray

me to keep back some part, for fear I robbed myself. To address thee

delights me, there is such cleanness in the delivery. I am delivered of

my tale, which, told to strangers, still would linger on my lips as if

untold, or doubtful how it ran.

_March 12._ Consider what a difference there is between living and

dying. To die is not to _begin_ to die, and _continue_; it is not a

state of continuance, but of transientness; but to live is a condition

of continuance, and does not mean to be born merely. There is no

continuance of death. It is a transient phenomenon. Nature presents

nothing in a state of death.

_March 13. Sunday._ The sad memory of departed friends is soon incrusted

over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as their monuments are

overgrown with moss.[345] Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By

the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly

objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides to this

world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or

dissolution, in life or death. For seen with the eye of a poet, as God

sees them, all are alive and beautiful; but seen with the historical

eye, or the eye of the memory, they are dead and offensive. If we see

Nature as pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; but seen as

progressing, she is beautiful.

* * * * *

I am startled that God can make me so rich even with my own cheap

stores. It needs but a few wisps of straw in the sun, or some small word

dropped, or that has long lain silent in some book. When heaven begins

and the dead arise, no trumpet is blown; perhaps the south wind will

blow. What if you or I be dead! God is alive still.

_March 14._ Chaucer's genius does not soar like Milton's, but is

genial and familiar. It is only a greater portion of humanity, with

all its weakness. It is not heroic, as Raleigh, or pious, as Herbert,

or philosophical, as Shakespeare, but the child of the English nation,

but that child that is "father of the man." His genius is only for the

most part an exceeding naturalness. It is perfect sincerity, though with

the behavior of a child rather than of a man.[346] He can complain, as

in the "Testament of Love," but yet so truly and unfeignedly that his

complaint does not fail to interest. All England has his case at heart.

He shows great tenderness and delicacy, but not the heroic sentiment.

His genius was feminine, not masculine,—not but such is rarest to find

in woman (though the appreciation of it is not),—but less manly than

the manliest.[347]

* * * * *

It is not easy to find one brave enough to play the game of love quite

alone with you, but they must get some third person, or world, to

countenance them. They thrust others between. Love is so delicate and

fastidious that I see not how [it] can ever begin. Do you expect me to

love with you, unless you make my love secondary to nothing else? Your

words come tainted, if the thought of the world darted between thee and

the thought of me. You are not venturous enough for love. It goes alone

unscared through wildernesses.

As soon as I see people loving what they see merely, and not their own

high hopes that they form of others, I pity, and do not want their love.

Such love delays me. Did I ask thee to love me who hate myself? No! Love

that I love, and I will love thee that lovest it.

The love is faint-hearted and short-lived that is contented with the

past history of its object. It does not prepare the soil to bear new

crops lustier than the old.

"I would I had leisure for these things," sighs the world. "When I have

done my quilting and baking, then I will not be backward."

Love never stands still, nor does its object. It is the revolving sun

and the swelling bud. If I know what I love, it is because I _remember_

it.

Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would

the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not

equally so? What am I good for now, who am still marching after high

things, but to hear and tell the news, to bring wood and water, and

count how many eggs the hens lay? In the meanwhile, I expect my life

will begin. I will not aspire longer. I will see what it is I would be

after. I will be unanimous.

_March 15. Tuesday._ It is a new day; the sun shines. The poor have

come out to employ themselves in the sunshine, the old and feeble to

scent the air once more. I hear the bluebird and the song sparrow and

the robin, and the note of the lark leaks up through the meadows, as if

its bill had been thawed by the warm sun.

As I am going to the woods I think to take some small book in my pocket

whose author has been there already, whose pages will be as good as my

thoughts, and will eke them out or show me human life still gleaming in

the horizon when the woods have shut out the town. But I can find none.

None will sail as far forward into the bay of nature as my thought.

They stay at home. I would go home. When I get to the wood their thin

leaves rustle in my fingers. They are bare and obvious, and there is no

halo or haze about them. Nature lies far and fair behind them all.[348]

I should like to meet the great and serene sentence, which does not

reveal itself,—only that it is great,—which I may never with my utmost

intelligence pierce through and beyond (more than the earth itself),

which no intelligence can understand. There should be a kind of life

and palpitation to it; under its rind a kind of blood should circulate

forever, communicating freshness to its countenance.[349]

* * * * *

Cold Spring.—I hear nothing but a phœbe, and the wind, and the rattling

of a chaise in the wood. For a few years I stay here, not knowing,

taking my own life by degrees, and then I go. I hear a spring bubbling

near, where I drank out of a can in my earliest youth. The birds, the

squirrels, the alders, the pines, they seem serene and in their places.

I wonder if my life looks as serene to them too. Does no creature, then,

see with the eyes of its own narrow destiny, but with God's? When God

made man, he reserved some parts and some rights to himself. The eye has

many qualities which belong to God more than man. It is his lightning

which flashes in it. When I look into my companion's eye, I think it is

God's private mine. It is a noble feature; it cannot be degraded; for

God can look on all things undefiled.

* * * * *

Pond.—Nature is constantly original and inventing new patterns, like a

mechanic in his shop. When the overhanging pine drops into the water, by

the action of the sun, and the wind rubbing it on the shore, its boughs

are worn white and smooth and assume fantastic forms, as if turned by a

lathe.[350] All things, indeed, are subjected to a rotary motion, either

gradual and partial or rapid and complete, from the planet and system

to the simplest shellfish and pebbles on the beach; as if all beauty

resulted from an object turning on its own axis, or others turning

about it. It establishes a new centre in the universe. As all curves

have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character

has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or

waving of the body toward it.

* * * * *

The great and solitary heart will love alone, without the knowledge of

its object. It cannot have society in its love. It will expend its love

as the cloud drops rain upon the fields over which [it] floats.

The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly; only the lover's

words are heard. The intellect should never speak; it is not a natural

sound. How trivial the best actions are! I am led about from sunrise to

sunset by an ignoble routine, and yet can find no better road. I must

make a part of the planet. I must obey the law of nature.

_March 16. Wednesday._ Raleigh's Maxims are not true and impartial, but

yet are expressed with a certain magnanimity, which was natural to the

man, as if this selfish policy could easily afford to give place in him

to a more human and generous. He gives such advice that we have more

faith in his conduct than his principles.

He seems to have carried the courtier's life to the highest pitch of

magnanimity and grace it was capable of. He is liberal and generous

as a prince,—that is, within bounds; brave, chivalrous, heroic, as the

knight in armor and not as a defenseless man. His was not the heroism of

Luther, but of Bayard. There was more of grace than of truth in it. He

had more taste than character. There may be something petty in a refined

taste; it easily degenerates into effeminacy; it does not consider the

broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is

fastidious and curious, or nice only.

* * * * *

The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest

and soundest. He who uttered them had a right to speak. He did not stand

on a rolling stone, but was well assured of his footing, and naturally

breathed them without effort. They were spoken in the nick of time.

With rare fullness were they spoken, as a flower expands in the field;

and if you dispute their doctrine, you will say, "But there is truth

in their assurance." Raleigh's are of this nature, spoken with entire

satisfaction and heartiness. They are not philosophy, but poetry.

With him it was always well done and nobly said.

That is very true which Raleigh says about the equal necessity of

war and law,—that "the necessity of war, which among human actions

is most lawless, hath some kind of affinity and near resemblance with

the necessity of law;" for both equally rest on force as their basis,

and war is only the resource of law, either on a smaller or larger

scale,—its authority asserted. In war, in some sense, lies the very

genius of law. It is law creative and active; it is the first principle

of the law. What is human warfare but just this,—an effort to make the

laws of God and nature take sides with one party. Men make an arbitrary

code, and, because it is not right, they try to make it prevail by

might. The moral law does not want any champion. Its asserters do not

go to war. It was never infringed with impunity. It is inconsistent to

decry war and maintain law, for if there were no need of war there would

be no need of law.

* * * * *

I must confess I see no resource but to conclude that conscience was not

given us to no purpose, or for a hindrance, but that, however flattering

order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy; and

we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain

ourselves on this earth and in this life as we may, without signing our

death-warrant in the outset. What does the law protect? My rights? or

any rights? My right, or the right? If I avail myself of it, it may help

my sin; it cannot help my virtue. Let us see if we cannot stay here,

where God has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach

to the earth? While the law holds fast the thief and murderer for my

protection (I should say its own), it lets itself go loose. Expediencies

differ. They may clash. English law may go to war with American law,

that is English interest with American interest, but what is expedient

for the whole world will be absolute right, and synonymous with the law

of God. So the law is only partial right. It is selfish, and consults

for the interest of the few.[351]

Somehow, strangely, the vice of men gets well represented and protected,

but their virtue has none to plead its cause, nor any charter of

immunities and rights. The Magna Charta is not chartered rights, but

chartered wrongs.

_March 17. Thursday._ I have been making pencils all day, and then at

evening walked to see an old schoolmate who is going to help make the

Welland Canal navigable for ships round Niagara. He cannot see any

such motives and modes of living as I; professes not to look beyond

the securing of certain "creature comforts." And so we go silently

different ways, with all serenity, I in the still moonlight through the

village this fair evening to write these thoughts in my journal, and he,

forsooth, to mature his schemes to ends as good, maybe, but different.

So are we two made, while the same stars shine quietly over us. If I or

he be wrong, Nature yet consents placidly. She bites her lip and smiles

to see how her children will agree. So does the Welland Canal get built,

and other conveniences, while I live. Well and good, I must confess.

Fast sailing ships are hence not detained.

What means this changing sky, that now I freeze and contract and go

within myself to warm me, and now I say it is a south wind, and go all

soft and warm along the way? I sometimes wonder if I do not breathe the

south wind.

_March 18. Friday._ Whatever book or sentence will bear to be read

twice, we may be sure was thought twice. I say this thinking of Carlyle,

who writes pictures or first impressions merely, which consequently

will only bear a first reading. As if any transient, any _new_, mood of

the best man deserved to detain the world long. I should call Carlyle's

writing essentially dramatic, excellent acting, entertaining especially

to those who see rather than those who hear, not to be repeated more

than a joke. If he did not think who made the joke, how shall we think

who hear it? He never consults the oracle, but thinks to utter oracles

himself. There is nothing in his books for which he is not, and does

not feel, responsible. He does not retire behind the truth he utters,

but stands in the foreground. I wish he would just think, and tell

me what he thinks, appear to me in the attitude of a man with his ear

inclined, who comes as silently and meekly as the morning star, which

is unconscious of the dawn it heralds, leading the way up the steep as

though alone and unobserved in its observing, without looking behind.

He is essentially a humorist. But humors will not feed a man; they are

the least satisfactory morsel to the healthy appetite. They circulate;

I want rather to meet that about which they circulate. The heart is not

a humor, nor do they go to the heart, as the blood does.[352]

_March 19. Saturday_. When I walk in the fields of Concord and meditate

on the destiny of this prosperous slip of the Saxon family, the

unexhausted energies of this new country, I forget that this which is

now Concord was once Musketaquid, and that the _American race_ has had

its destiny also. Everywhere in the fields, in the corn and grain land,

the earth is strewn with the relics of a race which has vanished as

completely as if trodden in with the earth. I find it good to remember

the eternity behind me as well as the eternity before. Wherever I go, I

tread in the tracks of the Indian. I pick up the bolt which he has but

just dropped at my feet. And if I consider destiny I am on his trail. I

scatter his hearthstones with my feet, and pick out of the embers of his

fire the simple but enduring implements of the wigwam and the chase. In

planting my corn in the same furrow which yielded its increase to his

support so long, I displace some memorial of him.

I have been walking this afternoon over a pleasant field planted with

winter rye, near the house, where this strange people once had their

dwelling-place. Another species of mortal men, but little less wild to

me than the musquash they hunted. Strange spirits, dæmons, whose eyes

could never meet mine; with another nature and another fate than mine.

The crows flew over the edge of the woods, and, wheeling over my head,

seemed to rebuke, as dark-winged spirits more akin to the Indian than

I. Perhaps only the present disguise of the Indian. If the new has a

meaning, so has the old.[353]

Nature has her russet hues as well as green. Indeed, our eye splits

on every object, and we can as well take one path as the other. If I

consider its history, it is old; if its destiny, it is new. I may see

a part of an object, or the whole. I will not be imposed on and think

Nature is old because the season is advanced. I will study the botany of

the mosses and fungi on the decayed [wood], and remember that decayed

wood is not old, but has just begun to be what it is. I need not think

of the pine almond[354] or the acorn and sapling when I meet the fallen

pine or oak, more than of the generations of pines and oaks which have

fed the young tree. The new blade of the corn, the third leaf of the

melon, these are not green but gray with time, but sere in respect of

time.

The pines and the crows are not changed, but instead that Philip and

Paugus stand on the plain, here are Webster and Crockett. Instead of the

council-house is the legislature. What a new aspect have new eyes given

to the land! Where is this country but in the hearts of its inhabitants?

Why, there is only so much of Indian America left as there is of the

American Indian in the character of this generation.

* * * * *

A blithe west wind is blowing over all. In the fine flowing haze, men

at a distance seem shadowy and gigantic, as ill-defined and great as

men should always be. I do not know if yonder be a man or a ghost.

* * * * *

What a consolation are the stars to man!—so high and out of his reach,

as is his own destiny. I do not know but my life is fated to be thus low

and grovelling always. I cannot discover its use even to myself. But it

is permitted to see those stars in the sky equally useless, yet highest

of all and deserving of a fair destiny. My fate is in some sense linked

with that of the stars, and if they are to persevere to a great end,

shall I die who could conjecture it? It surely is some encouragement

to know that the stars are my fellow-creatures, for I do not suspect

but they are reserved for a high destiny. Has not he who discovers and

names a planet in the heavens as long a year as it? I do not fear that

any misadventure will befall _them_. Shall I not be content to disappear

with the missing stars? Do I mourn their fate?

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

* * * * *