22 December 1851 – 28 December 1851

If I am thus seemingly cold compared with my companion’s warm, who knows but mine is a less transient glow, a steadier and more equable heat, like that of the earth in spring, in which the flowers spring and expand? It is not words that I wish to hear or to utter, but relations that I seek to stand in; and it oftener happens, methinks, that I go away unmet, un- recognized, ungreeted in my offered relation, than that you are disappointed of words. If I can believe that we are related to one another as truly and gloriously as I have imagined, I ask nothing more, and words are not required to convince me of this. I am a of relations, you of words. I have seen, in the form, in the expression of face, of a child three years old, the tried magnanimity and grave nobility of ancient and departed worthies. Just saw a little Irish boy, come from the distant shanty in the woods over the bleak railroad to school this morn- . ing, take his last step from his last snow-drift on to the schoolhouse door-step, floundering still; saw not his face or his profile, only his mien, and imagined, saw clearly in imagination, his old-worthy face behind the sober visor of his cap. Ah! this little Irish boy, I know not why, revives to my mind the worthies of antiquity. He is not drawn, he never was drawn, in a willow wagon; he progresses by his own brave steps. Has not the world waited for such a generation? Here he conde- scends to his a-b-c without one smile, who has the lore of worlds uncounted in his brain. He speaks not of — the adventures of the causeway. What was the bravery of Leonidas and his three hundred boys at the pass of Thermopyle to this infant’s? They but dared to die; he dares to live, — and take his ‘‘reward of merit,’’ per- chance without relaxing his face into a smile, that over- looks his unseen and unrewardable merits. Little Johnny Riordan, who faces cold and routs it like a Persian army, who, yet innocent, carries in his knees the strength of a thousand Indras. That does not reward the thousandth part of his merit. While the charitable waddle about cased in furs, he, lively as a cricket, passes them on his way to school. I forget for the time Kossuth and his Hungarians. Here ’s a Kossuth for you! ? An innocent child is a man who has repented once for all, and is born again, — has entered into the joy of his Lord. Almost the whole world is orthodox and looks upon you as in a state of nature. In conversation with peo- ple of more than average wit, I find that the common assumption is that they have experienced a new birth, but you are in a state of nature.

It would give me such joy to know that a friend had come to see me, and yet that pleasure I sel- dom if ever experience. It is a record of the mellow and ripe moments that I would keep. I would not preserve the husk of life, but the kernel. When the cup of life is full and flowing over, preserve some drops as a specimen, sample. When the intellect enlightens the heart and the heart warms the intellect. Thoughts will sometimes possess our heads when we are up and about our business which are the exact coun- terpart of the bad dreams which we sometimes have by night, and I think that the intellect is equally inert in both cases. Very frequently, no doubt, the thoughts men have are the consequence of something which they have eaten or done. Our waking moods and humors are our dreams, but whenever we are truly awake and serene, and healthy in all our senses, we have memorable visions. Who that takes up a book wishes for the report of the clogged bowels or the impure blood? Yesterday afternoon I walked to the stone bridge over the Assabet, and thence down the river on the ice to the Leaning Hemlocks, and then crossed the other branch to the house. Do I not see two kinds of black alder, one blotched, the other lighter-colored, the former with many small berries crowded, the latter larger and single? Scared up partridges into the tops of the hemlocks, where they thought to conceal themselves. Observed where a woodchopper had come to the river and cut a hole for water some days before. The river, frozen unexpectedly even, — but few open places, — had gone down since it froze, and the ice was accord- ingly bulged up over the rocks in its channel, with many fine cracks in all directions. It was a good opportu- nity to examine the fluviatile trees. I was struck by the amount of small interlaced roots — making almost a solid mass — of some red (?) oaks on the bank which the water had undermined, opposite Sam Barrett’s. Observed by a wall beneath Nawshawtuct where many rabbits appeared to have played and nearly half a pint of dung was dropped in one pile on the snow.

It spits snow this afternoon. Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road. I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of asnow-storm. The snow bunting (Em- beriza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic, not the slate-colored. Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magni- ficent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; like large catbirds’ at a distance, but, nearer at hand, some of them, when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps (?), with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be. The note I heard, a rather faint and in- | nocent whistle of two bars. Now and long since the birds’ nests have been full of snow.

Thursday. Via spruce swamp on Conan- tum to hilltop, returning across river over shrub oak plain to Cliffs. A wind is now blowing the light snow which fell a day or two ago into drifts, especially on the lee, now the south, side of the walls, the outlines of the drifts corre- sponding to the chinks in the walls and the eddies of the wind. The snow glides, unperceived for the most part, over the open fields without rising into the air (unless the ground is elevated), until it reaches an opposite wall, which it sifts through and is blown over, blowing off from it like steam when seen in the sun. As it passes through the chinks, it does not drive straight onward, but curves gracefully upwards into fantastic shapes, somewhat like the waves which curve as they break upon the shore; that is, as if the snow that passes through a chink were one connected body, detained by the friction of its lower side. It takes the form of saddles and shells and porringers. It builds up a fantastic alabaster wall behind the first, — a snowy sierra. It is wonderful what sharp turrets it builds up, — builds up, 2. e. by accumu- lation though seemingly by attrition, though the curves upward to a point like the prows of ancient vessels look like sharp carving, or as if the material had been held before the blowpipe. So what was blown up into the air gradually sifts down into the road or field, and forms the slope of the sierra. Astonishingly sharp and thin overhanging eaves it builds, even this dry snow, where it has the least suggestion from a wall or bank, — less than a mason ever springs his brick from. This is the architecture of the snow. On high hills exposed to wind and sun, it curls off like the steam from a damp roof in the morning. Such sharply defined forms it takes as if the core had been the flames of gaslights. I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand? whether it will go down in clouds or a clear sky? I feel that it is late when the mountains in the north and northwest have ceased to reflect the sun. The shadow is not partial but universal. In a winter day the sun is almost all in all. I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing. I, standing twenty miles off, see a crimson cloud in the horizon. You tell me itis a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow, and I have new and indescribable fancies, and you have not touched the secret of that influence. If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient. If there is nothing in it which speaks to my imagination, what boots it? What sort of science is that which enriches the understanding, but robs the imagination ? not merely robs Peter to pay Paul, but takes from Peter more than it ever gives to Paul? That is simply the way in which it speaks to the understanding, and that is the account which the understanding gives of it; but that is not the way it speaks to the imagination, and that is not the account which the imagination gives of it. Just as in- adequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet’s account of a steam-engine. If we knew all things thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really? It would be a truer discipline for the writer to take the least film of thought that floats in the twilight sky of his mind for his theme, about which he has scarcely one idea (that would be teaching his ideas how to shoot), faintest intimations, shadowiest subjects, make a lec- ture on this, by assiduity and attention get perchance two views of the same, increase a little the stock of knowledge, clear a new field instead of manuring the old; instead of making a lecture out of such obvious truths, hackneyed to the minds of all thinkers. We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the mind to the experience of the hand, to prove our gossamer truths practical, to show their connection with our every-day life (better show their distance from our every-day life), to relate them to the cider-mill and the banking insti- tution. Ah, give me pure mind, pure thought! Let me not be in haste to detect the wniversal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it! Much finer themes I aspire to, which will yield no satisfaction to the vulgar mind, not one sentence for them. Perchance it may convince such that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy. Dissolve one nebula, and so destroy the nebular system and hypothesis. Do not seek expressions, seek thoughts to be expressed. By perseverance you get two views of the same rare truth. That way of viewing things you know of, least insisted on by you, however, least remembered, — take that view, adhere to that, insist on that, see all things from that point of view. Will you let these intimations go un- attended to and watch the door-bell or knocker? That is your text. Do not speak for other men; speak for yourself. They show you as in a vision the kingdoms of the world, and of all the worlds, but you prefer to look in upon a puppet-show. Though you should only speak to one kindred mind in all time, though you should not speak to one, but only utter aloud, that you may the more completely realize and live in the idea which contains the reason of your life, that you may build yourself up to the height of your conceptions, that you may remem- ber your Creator in the days of your youth and justify His ways to man, that the end of life may not be its t amusement, speak — though your thought presupposes the non-existence of your hearers — thoughts that tran- scend life and death. What though mortal ears are not fitted to hear absolute truth! Thoughts that blot out the earth are best conceived in the night, when darkness has already blotted it out from sight. We look upward for inspiration.

I observed this afternoon that when Ed- mund Hosmer came home from sledding wood and un- yoked his oxen, they made a business of stretching and scratching themselves with their horns and rubbing against the posts, and licking themselves in those parts which the yoke had prevented their reaching all day. The human way in which they behaved affected me even pathetically. They were too serious to be glad that their day’s work was done; they had not spirits enough left for that. ‘They behaved as a tired wood- chopper might. This was to me a new phase in the life of the laboring ox. It is painful to think how they may sometimes be overworked. I saw that even the ox could be weary with toil.

Saturday. Sunset from Fair Haven Hill. This evening there are many clouds in the west into which the sun goes down so that we have our visible or apparent sunset and red evening sky as much as fifteen minutes before the real sunset. You must be early on the hills to witness such a sunset, — by half past four at least. Then all the vales, even to the horizon, are full of a purple vapor, which half veils the distant moun- tains, and the windows of undiscoverable farmhouses shine like an early candle or a fire. After the sun has gone behind a cloud, there appears to be a gathering of clouds around his setting, and for a few moments his light in the amber sky seems more intense, brighter, and purer than at noonday. I think you never see such a brightness in the noon- day heavens as in the western sky sometimes, just before the sun goes down in clouds, like the ecstasy which we [are] told sometimes lights up the face of a dying man. That is a serene or evening death, like the end of the day. Then, at last, through all the grossness which has accumulated in the atmosphere of day, is seen a patch of serene sky fairer by contrast with the surrounding dark than midday, and even the gross atmosphere of the day is gilded and made pure as amber by the setting sun, as if the day’s sins were forgiven it. The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world. There is no winter necessarily in the sky, though the snow covers the earth. The sky is always ready to an- swer to our moods; we can see summer there or winter. Snow and drifts on the earth; it swiftly descends from the heavens and leaves them pure. The heavens present, per- haps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter. It is remarkable that the sun rarely goes down with- out a cloud. Venus — I suppose it is —is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight.

All day a drizzling rain, ever and anon holding up with driving mists. A January thaw. The snow rapidly dissolving; in all hollows a pond form- ing; unfathomable water beneath the snow. Went into Tommy Wheeler’s house, where still stands the spin- ning-wheel, and even the loom, home-made. Great pitch pine timbers overhead, fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, telling of the primitive forest here. The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them, and they seem of a piece with it. Some one has cut a hole in the ice at Jenny’s Brook, and set a steel trap under water, and suspended a large piece of meat over it, for a bait for a mink, apparently.