in Thoreau’s Journal:

Asters various shades of blue and especially the smaller kinds of dense flowering white ones are more than ever—by the roadsides….The golden glow of autumn concentrated—more golden than the sun….The earth wears different colors or liveries at different seasons.  If I come by at this season a golden blaze will salute me here from a thousand suns.  How earnestly & rapidly each creature—each flower is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!  Nature never lost a day—nor a moment — As the planet in its orbit & around its axis—so do the seasons— —so does time revolve with a rapidity inconceivable.  

I must walk more with free senses–– It is as bad to study stars & clouds as flowers & stones–– I must let my senses wander as my thoughts––my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look––but I say that is rather to see––& the more you look the less you will observe––I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest––but suffer from a constant strain.  Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object.  Let it come to you….What I need is not to look at all––but a true sauntering of the eye.