January 26

by

1852 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Let us preserve religiously—secure—protect—the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.—  Else what are heat & cold— day & night—sun moon, & stars to us? Was it not from sympathy with the present life of nature that we were born at this epoch rather than at another?

The truest account of heaven is the fairest—& I will accept none which disappoints expectation. It is more glorious to expect a better, than enjoy a worse.

My life as essentially belongs to the present—as that of a willow tree in the spring. Now Now its catkins expand—its yellow bark shines—its sap flows, now or never must you make whistles of it. Get the day to back you—let it back you & the night.

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We really have four seasons, each incredible to the other.  Winter cannot be mistaken for summer here. Though I see the boat turned up on the shore, and half buried under snow, as I walk over the invisible river, summer is far away with its rustling reeds….Would you see your mind, look into the sky.  Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise. He whom the weather disappoints, disappoints himself.

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1853 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The world has been visibly recreated in the night. Mornings of creation I call them. In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, while the sun is rising with more than usual splendour, I look back for the era of this creation not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough….