in Thoreau’s Journal:

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this—which is stereotyped in the poet’s life—is what he has become through his work…

Photo: July 1, 2019 along the Sandwich Notch Road, White Mountain National Forest, Sandwich, NH

Let not the artist expect that his true work will stand in any prince’s gallery.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with humane affections, such as are associated with one’s native place, for instance. She is most significant to a lover.

A lover of Nature is preeminently a lover of man. If I have no friend, what is Nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How different is day from day! Yesterday the air was filled with a thick fog-like haze, so that the sun did not once shine with ardor, but everything was so tempered under this thin veil that it was a luxury merely to be outdoors, —you were less out for it. The shadows of the apple trees even early in the afternoon were remarkably distinct. The landscape wore a classical smoothness. Every object was as in [a] picture with a glass over it. I saw some hills on this side the river, looking from Conantum, on which, the grass being of a yellow tinge, though the sun did not shine out on them, they had the appearance of being shone upon peculiarly. It was merely an unusual yellow tint of the grass. 

Photo: June 29, 2015 at Cook Intervale, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The rubus odoratus purple flowering raspberry in gardens––

Photo: June 28, 2023 along the Sandwich Notch Road, White Mountain National Forest, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I still perceive that ambrosial sweetness from the meadows in some places. Give me the strong, rank scent of ferns in the spring for vigor; just blossoming late in the spring. A healthy and refined nature would always derive pleasure from the landscape. As long as the bodily vigor lasts, man sympathizes with nature.

Photo: June 27, 2019 on the Guinea Pond Trail, White Mountain National Forest, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Just so much beauty and virtue as there is in the world, and just so much ugliness and vice, you see expressed in flowers. 

Each human being has his flower which expresses his character.  In them nothing is concealed, but everything published. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

P.M. To Assabet bathing place. Found an unusual quantity of Amelanchier berries.

I think of the two common kinds, one a taller bush twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter colored leaves, and larger, or at least somewhat softer, fruit, the other, a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves, and dark blue berries, with often a sort of wooliness on them. Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first and, I think, the sweetest bush berries, somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The landscape, by its patient resting there, teaches me that all good remains with him that waiteth, and that I shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here, than by hurrying over the hills of the west.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I cannot see the bottom of the sky, because I cannot see to the bottom of myself.

It is the symbol of my own infinity. My eye penetrates as far into the ether as that depth is inward from which my contemporary thought springs.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The strawberries may perhaps be considered a fruit of the spring, for they have depended chiefly on the freshness and moisture of spring, and on high lands are already dried up; a soft fruit, a sort of manna which falls in June, and in the meadows they lurk at the shady roots of the grass. Now the blueberry, a somewhat firmer fruit, is beginning. Nuts, the firmest, will be the last.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

That solitude  was sweet to me as a flower.

I sat down on the boundless level and enjoyed the solitude, drank it in, the medicine for which I had pined…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Upland haying begun.  or beginning–

in Thoreau’s Journal:

What subtle differences between one season and another! The warmest weather has, perchance, arrived and the longest days, but not the driest.

When I remember gathering ripe blackberries on sandy fields or stones by the roadside, the very berries warmed by the sun, I am convinced of this. The seasons admit of infinite degrees in their revolutions.  Found one of the purple orchises in an open meadow.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I should be pleased to meet man in the woods. I wish he were to be encountered like wild caribous and moose.

I am startled when I consider how little I am actually concerned about the things I write in my journal.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is a cool east wind, —and has been afternoons for several days, —which has produced a very thick haze or a fog. I find a tortoise egg on this peak at least sixty feet above the pond. There is a fine ripple and sparkle on the pond, seen through the mist. But what signifies the beauty of nature when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them.

When we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be serene in a country where both rulers and ruled are without principle? The remembrance of the baseness of politicians spoils my walks. My thoughts are murder to the State; I endeavor in vain to observe nature; my thoughts involuntarily go plotting against the State. I trust that all just men will conspire. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The fields are blued with blue eyed grass a slaty blue. The epilobium shows some color in its spikes. How rapidly new flowers infold—as if nature would get through her work too soon. One has as much as he can do to observe how flowers successively unfold. It is a flowery revolution to which but few attend. Hardly too much attention can be bestowed on flowers.

We follow we march after the highest color—that is our flag—our standard—our “color.” Flowers were made to be seen not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes—spectators.—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows in this pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shores, and is very beautiful, ––not too high-colored, ––especially its reflections in the water. 

There was something in its bluish blade which harmonized with the greenish water.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

See the Common iris in meadow in Acton—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

My shadow has the distinctness of a second person, a certain black companion bordering on the imp, and I ask, “Who is this?” which I see dodging behind me as I am about to sit down on a rock.

No one to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons. Hardly two nights are alike. The rocks do not feel warm to-night, for the air is warmest; nor does the sand particularly. A book of the seasons, each page of which should be written out-of-doors, or in its own locality wherever it may be.

When you get into the road, though far from the town, and feel the sand under your feet, it is as if you had reached your own gravel walk. You no longer hear the whip-poor-will, nor regard your shadow, for here you expect a fellow-traveller. You catch yourself walking merely. The road leads your steps and thoughts alike to the town. You see only the path, and your thoughts wander from the objects which are presented to your senses. You are no longer in place.  It is like conformity, —walking in the ways of men.